Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings: Studies in the Representation of Physical and Mental Suffering 9004677461, 9789004677463

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Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings

Studies in Ancient Medicine Managing editor Philip J. van der Eijk (Humboldt-Universitä t zu Berlin)

Editors Ann Ellis Hanson (Yale University) Brooke Holmes (Princeton University) Orly Lewis (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) John Scarborough† (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Joseph Ziegler (University of Haifa)

volume 58

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sam

Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings Studies in the Representation of Physical and Mental Suffering

Edited by

Jacqueline R. Clarke Daniel King Han Baltussen

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Close up of marble bust sculpture titled ‘Marsyas’ ca. 1680–1685 by Balthasar Permoser. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund and Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 2002. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2023020584

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 0925-1421 isbn 978-90-04-54948-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-67746-3 (e-book) Copyright 2023 by Jacqueline R. Clarke, Daniel King and Han Baltussen. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau, V&R unipress and Wageningen Academic. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface vii List of Figures and Tables viii Abbreviations ix Notes on Contributors xii 1

Introduction: A New Approach to Pain in Antiquity 1 Jacqueline Clarke, Daniel King and Han Baltussen

2

Labelling Pain: Early Greek Concepts from Homer to the Hellenistic Era 12 Han Baltussen

3

Painful Drinks: Poison and Pain Experience in Nicander’s Alexipharmaca 44 Daniel King

4

Emotional Persuasion: Communicating Pain in Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae 66 Sarah Lawrence

5

Is Pain Natural? A Study of Stoic Philosophy Jean-Christophe Courtil

6

Pain with a PR Problem: Narrating Gout-Induced Pain in the Second Sophistic 121 Georgia Petridou

7

Perceiving and Diagnosing Pain according to Archigenes of Apamea 145 Orly Lewis

8

Between Aristotle and Stoicism: Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Varieties of Pain 176 Wei Cheng

9

Traumatic Pain and the Transformation of Identity: Prudentius and Ovid Compared 205 Jacqueline Clarke

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contents

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Ignatius of Antioch’s Anticipation of Torture: An Alternative Reading of Romans 4–5 229 Fiona McMeekin

11

The Bishop’s Case Book: Augustine on Pain Gillian Clark

12

Affective Lexica between Hellenistic Philosophy and Christian Theology 273 Jonathan Zecher Index Locorum 299 Index of Modern Authors Index of Subjects 309

308

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Preface This project took shape in Adelaide when Jacqueline Clarke became very interested in the poems of Prudentius and wanted to explore the pain narratives. She invited Han Baltussen to join her in preparing a grant application to fund the activities (it was submitted but not supported). We were fortunate to have Daniel King join us as collaborator (and co-applicant), bringing great expertise in Hellenistic literature and the history of medicine. His input and network enhanced the scope and depth of the project considerably. When Daniel offered to organise a conference in Exeter, we seized the opportunity to bring together other colleagues working on similar topics. The conference took place in April 2018. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the A.G. Leventis Foundation through its establishment of the Initiative in the Impact of Greek Culture at Exeter University for supporting the conference where many of the current contributors presented first drafts of their papers. We thank all contributors for their wonderful papers, their responsiveness and patience, while we were preparing the volume for the press during the Covid years (2020–2021). We also thank Mary Harpas (PhD candidate at Adelaide), Taylor Westmacott and Emily Chambers (MPhil candidates at Adelaide) and Dr Silke Sitzler for their editorial assistance.

Figures and Tables Figures 6.1

Perseus Gem. St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, Ж.1517 (GR-21714). © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo: Svetlana Svetova, Konstantin Sinyavski 135

Tables 7.1 7.2

Kinds of Pain according to Archigenes and the Body Parts in which they occur 151 Body Parts and the pains they cause according to Archigenes 153

Abbreviations General Abbreviations CCSL CMG CSEL DK HC LCL LSJ OLD SVF TLG TLL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Corpus medicorum Graecorum Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiaticorum Latinorum H. Diels-W. Kranz, Die Vorsokratiker Hippocratic Corpus Loeb Classical Library Liddell, Scott and Jones (eds) Greek-English Lexicon Oxford Latin Dictionary Stoicorum veterum fragmenta Thesaurus linguae Graecae Thesaurus linguae Latinae

Abbreviations for Specific Texts The abbreviations for most ancient authors and texts follow the Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th edition) but some (especially if the work isn’t cited in the OCD) follow LSJ and OLD. A small number of authors and/or works are not present in any of these reference works; this is particularly the case for works from late antiquity, the early Church fathers and some medical texts. These are: Aët. Amidenus Aët. Plac. Alex. Aphr. PE

Aëtius (of Amida), Libri Medicinales (Medical Books) Aëtius (doxographus), Placita philosophorum Alexander of Aphrodisias, Problemata Ethica (Ethical Problems) Andronic. Peri pathōn Andronicus, On the passions Aret. SD Aretaeus, Signs and Causes of Chronic Diseases Ar. Did. De Phil. sect. Arius Didymus, De philosophorum sectis liber Arist. DM ps.-Aristotle, De Mundo (On the Cosmos) Arist. Somn. Vig. Aristotle, De somno et vigilia (On Sleep and Sleeplessness) August. En Psal. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos Chalcid. In Tim. Chalcidius, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus Claud. In Eutr. Claudian, in Eutropium (Against Eutropius)

x Clem. Al.

abbreviations Clement of Alexandria, Paed. = Paedagogus (The Instructor) Strom. Stromata (Miscellanies)

Epict. Diatrib. Epictetus, Diatribae (Discourses) Gal. Galen of Pergamum Aff. Dig. De proprium animi (The Passions of the Soul) Alim. Fac. De alimentis facultatibus (The Properties of Foodstuffs) Ant. De antidotis (On Antidotes) Caus. Symp. De symptomatum causis (Causes of Symptoms) Diff. Puls. De differentiis pulsuum (Differences of Pulses) Diff. Symp. De symptomatum differentiis (On the Difference of Symptoms) Hipp. Epid. Hippocratis Epidemiarum libri (On Hippocrates’ ‘Epidemics’), Ind. De indolentia (On the Avoidance of Grief ) Loc. Aff. De locis affectis (On Affected Places) MM De methodo medendi (Therapeutic Method) Mot. Musc. De motu musculorum (On the Movement of Muscles) PHP De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato) Ther. Pis. De theriaca (Theriac to Piso) UP De usu partium (On the Utility of Parts) Hp. Hippocrates Acut. De diaeta in morbis acutis (Regimen in Acute Diseases) Aer. De aere, aquis, locis (Airs, Waters, Places) Aff. De affectionibus (On Affections) Alim. De alimento (Nutriment) Art. De articulis (On Joints) Coac. Coacae Praenotiones (Coan Prenotions) Epid. De morbis popularibus (Epidemics) Flat. De flatibus (On breaths) Fract. De fracturis (On fractures) Genit. De semine (Generation) Gland. De glandulis (Glands) Int. De affectiones interioribus (Internal Affections) Loc. Hom. De locis de homine (Places in Man) Mul. De mulierum affectibus (Female Diseases), Morb. De morbis (Diseases) Morb. Sacr. De morbo sacro (On the Sacred Disease) Nat. Hom. De natura hominis (Nature of Man) Nat. Puer. De natura pueri (On the nature of the child)

abbreviations Off. Prog. Vict. VM

De officina medici (In the Surgery) Prognosticon (Prognostic) De diaeta (Regimen) De priscina medicina (Ancient Medicine)

Ign. Ignatius Eph. Epistle to Ephesians Phil. Epistle to Philadelphians Philip. Epistle to Philippians Rom. Epistle to the Romans Magn. Epistle to the Magnesians Trall. Epistle to the Trallians Smyrn. Epistle to the Smyrnians Plut. Plutarch De exil. De exilio (On Exile) De Stoic. repugn. Refutations of the Stoics Lib. aeg. Libidine et aegritudine (On Joy and Grief ) Quaest. conv. Quaestiones convivales (Table Talk) Virt. mor. De virtute morali (On moral Virtue) Poly. Philip. Polycarp of Smyrna, Letter to the Philippians Porph. Sent. Porphyry, Sententiae (ad Intelligibilia ducentes) Ps.-A. Aff. pseudo-Androniucs, De Affectibus (Affections) Ps.-Quintil. Min. Pseudo-Quintilian, Minor Declamations Sen. Seneca minor Br. De brevitate vitae (On the shortness of life) Constant. De constantia sapientis (On the Firmness of the Wise) Ir. De ira (On Anger) Marc. De consolatione ad Marciam (Consolation to Marcia) Sext. Emp. Math. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathmaticos Them. De An. Themistius, Paraphrasis of Aristotle’s De Anima

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Notes on Contributors Han Baltussen is the W.W. Hughes Professor of Classics, University of Adelaide (Australia) and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His research centres on Greco-Roman philosophy and intellectual history, and he has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and the Institute of Classical Studies (London). He has published widely on topics in ancient philosophy, most recently a new translation of Eunapius’ Lives of Philosophers and Sophists (Loeb 134). Wei Cheng is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Foreign Philosophy, Peking University (Beijing). His research focuses on ancient philosophy, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology. He has published several articles on Plato, Aristotle, the Old Academy, and ancient commentators on Aristotle. He is currently working on a Chinese translation and commentary of Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium. Gillian Clark is a Fellow of the British Academy and Professor Emerita of Ancient History, University of Bristol, UK. She co-edits Oxford Early Christian Studies / Texts (OUP) and Translated Texts for Historians 300–800 (Liverpool UP). She has published extensively on the social and intellectual history of late antiquity. Jacqueline Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Adelaide. Her research interests are mainly focused on Augustan and Late Latin poetry, and she has published widely on various aspects of these; she has also published in the field of reception studies. Her most recent article is ‘Female Pain in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’ in Classical Quarterly 71.1 (2021) 386–401. Jean-Christophe Courtil is Associate Professor in Latin Literature at the University of Toulouse, specialising in the history of ancient ideas. He is the author of several books and articles on the links between philosophy and medicine in the Roman Empire, notably his 2015 monograph ‘Sapientia contemptrix doloris’. Le corps souffrant dans l’œuvre philosophique de Sénèque (Latomus).

notes on contributors

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Daniel King is the Leventis Senior Lecturer in the Impact of Greek Culture at the University of Exeter. His research focusses on the history of the body in GrecoRoman culture and he has written widely on various related topics including pain and suffering, diagnosis, dietetics in this period. His monograph Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. Sarah Lawrence is the Charles Tesoriero Senior Lecturer in Latin at the University of New England, Australia, where she teaches Latin, Roman history, and Greco-Roman Ethics. Sarah’s research interests include Valerius Maximus, Seneca the Elder, Classical Languages pedagogy, and psychological extremes in the Roman world. Her most recent publication is on Valerius Maximus: ‘And Now for Something Completely Different …’, in J. Murray & D. Wardle (eds) Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla (Leiden: Brill, 2022) 47–72. Orly Lewis is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Classics, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the PI of ATLOMY, an interdisciplinary research team studying the history of Greco-Roman anatomy and developing an interactive research atlas of ancient anatomy, with 3D models of the body and its parts as described by Greek and Roman authors, as well as terminological and textual information. She has published widely on Greco-Roman medicine and ancient scientific method of the Hellenistic and Early Imperial periods. Fiona McMeekin is Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and in the final stages of writing up her PhD thesis entitled Reconfiguring Rationality: The Legitimation of Early Christian Martyrdom, supervised by Karla Pollmann. Fiona read Classics at Oxford as an undergraduate, focusing on philosophy and ancient history. Georgia Petridou is Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at the University of Liverpool. She works on Classical literature, history of Greek and Roman religion, and ancient medicine in its socio-cultural context. She serves on the editorial board of Religion, Medicine, and Health in Late Antiquity (Routledge), Translated Texts from Antiquity (University of Liverpool Press), and the academic journal ARYS.

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notes on contributors

Jonathan Zecher is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne), and the author of Spiritual Direction as a Medical Art in Early Christian Monasticism (OUP, 2022). He is currently working on the history of emotions in Byzantine and eastern Christian literature, and is co-director of ReMeDHe, an international working group for “Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity”.

chapter 1

Introduction: A New Approach to Pain in Antiquity Jacqueline Clarke, Daniel King and Han Baltussen

1

Why Study Pain in Antiquity?

As a quintessential aspect of human life, pain is an intriguing and complex physical and mental experience which deserves our attention, not the least because it often simply demands our attention. The world over, humans suffer various kinds of pain—chronic pain being one of the most destructive and costly afflictions we endure. As the ancients already knew so well, all humans experience delight (or joy), pain and distress, desire, and fear.1 But while ancient representations of such emotions as delight, desire and fear have received considerable attention, forms of distress and pain are still in need of study and clarification.2 Recent studies of pain have often focused on specific areas (philosophy and medicine), or on combining pain and pleasure.3 The eleven papers in this collection place the materials from antiquity in the spotlight from a new angle, examining a variety of texts and genres from across the Greco-Roman world. The contributions in this volume extract new insights from a selection of literary, philosophical, and medical texts, recontextualising a medical problem on the basis of both medical and non-medical texts, asking questions about access to pain experiences and how they were expressed. Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings: Studies in the Representation of Physical and Mental Suffering focuses on the subjective viewpoint on pain and

1 We deliberately echo the fourfold classification of the Stoics here, a school of thought which was dominant in the debate around emotions in antiquity (Graver [2002], 93), as will become clear in subsequent chapters. 2 On emotions including joy and pleasure, desire the literature is substantial: see, e.g., Winsor Leach (1993), Konstan (2008), Graver (2002). Fear seems to have received less attention, but see for instance Konstan (2006), Fotheringham (2006), Konstan (2008), ch. 6 (cf. Arist. Rhet. 2.5). Overall anger has been a more popular topic of study: Braund & Most (2004), Harris (2001). 3 Harris’ collection (2018) seems to lean towards pleasure more than pain. Rey (1993) treats a specific moment in the history of medicine. Perkins’ study (1995) offered an important new catalyst to the topic but has been overtaken by more detailed treatment of the pagan traditions. As to combined study of pleasure and pain, see, e.g., Cheng (2018), Peponi (2002), Frede (1992).

© Jacqueline Clarke et al., 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004677463_002

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distress as recorded in the historical record for the Greek and Roman world. The decision to focus on the aspect of pain that is much harder to measure in objective terms was made in part because recent and current medical treatments of pain have also come to see its value.4 The twentieth century has shown two parallel and eventually opposing trends in pain research: while since the 1950s physicians began to take pain more seriously as an independent phenomenon (rather than just a symptom), they also realised that discussing pain with patients and inviting them to express themselves about it could be useful, yet remained problematic. This realisation led to a shift from a presumed objective measure to a subjective one: patients are now asked to state how they assess the level of pain on a scale from one to ten. This approach clearly accepts the individuality of the pain experience and is most useful in acute cases of pain (for instance, for triage in emergency departments). Another point worth making is that modern treatment with drugs has in the case of opioids led to abuse, resulting in an increasing aversion to that kind of painkiller.5 From a scholarly perspective, there is a further reason for exploring the topic of pain, and more specifically in antiquity: the rise in emotion studies from an historical perspective. The growing recognition over the past four decades that pain might best be seen in wider cultural terms has driven broader, more interdisciplinary approaches.6 They acknowledge that pain has a subjective side and that physical and emotional suffering interact in complex ways. As will be argued below, these studies have also led to a revision of the traditional western model that pain is only a mechanical process and the preserve of physicians (and medicinal solutions). The historical study of emotions offers benefits from a whole new area in historical studies, which have opened up pioneering studies on the emotions, their affects and other aspects of human responses to life’s vicissitudes. The analysis of the language of pain can provide added value to understanding the interactions between doctors and patients.

4 This paragraph makes use of the account in Keefe (2021), esp. chapters 14–17. 5 In one case this led to addiction and loss of life. Consider the opioid epidemic in the U.S. as a result of the drug OxyContin produced by the Sackler corporation (Purdue). The extent of the problem began to become public in 2000 but has since led to hundreds of lawsuits and a high fine of the subsidiary company Purdue (which eventually had to declare bankruptcy), while the recent scandal around this rise of pain killers has caused many institutions—who had benefitted from the Sackler family’s philanthropy—to remove the Sackler name from their buildings. For a full account see Keefe (2021). 6 Coakley & Shelemay (2007). One such pioneering project was spearheaded by Australia’s ARC funded Centre for the History of Emotions. But others have placed the emotions in antiquity on the agenda, contributing to the developing discipline, scholars such as Chaniotis (2018), Cairns (2008), Kazantzidis, and Spatharas (2022).

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A pressing problem that arises for this kind of undertaking is that we do not have direct, privileged access to other people’s emotions, let alone to those of the ancients. The mediated quality of knowing anyone’s emotion brings with it the awareness that we can only examine the expression or representation of emotions. So our emphasis on the subjective takes the problem in its stride and makes it into a virtue: rather than attempting to offer deeper insight into the actual emotion, we acknowledge that we will remain at one remove from that primary experience (what it felt like), and thus place ourselves in a position in which we focus on raising questions about the nature of the experience of pain, in particular how it is articulated and narrated, both by those who are undergoing pain and those observing them—the latter case can imply the former, for example, when doctors reflect the reports of patients. The project thus combines three elements which have not been brought together before: (i) we consider a medical phenomenon from the subjective perspective of the patient; (ii) we pay attention to the emotional experiential element through language, narrative, and representation. We use ‘narrative’ in a narrow sense as a way to characterise the expression of an emotional experience with its accompanying complications; and (iii) the volume is the first to undertake a large-scale, longue durée study of pain in antiquity by putting together this range of texts across a long time and across multiple contexts, cultures and genres. We believe that this approach may bring novel insights to the topic, both on ancient materials and on the general human experience. The next two sections will cover the central question ‘What is Pain?’ (§ 2) and will next set out a range of issues and questions related to the concepts of pain, the attitudes towards pain, and the proposed solutions (§ 3): which terms are used most frequently, and do they develop or change? When does theorizing about pain begin? Should we view pain as ‘natural’? Does torture produce a very different experience? Do physicians only need medical knowledge to assist their patients? What is the role of patients in the healing process? The two sections aim to clarify the focus, approach, underlying questions, and shared themes of the papers in this volume.

2

Pain as Emotion

Pain is, despite its ubiquity, difficult to pin down: is it a physical noxious perception, or an emotion, or a combination of each? In a sense, attempts to define pain in this way are inherently problematic. They—like the question that heads this section—assume that pain is an object, a thing, a ‘what’. In this volume,

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we approach pain as a form of experience. Thinking about it in these terms reflects a growing body of scholarship on pain in the humanities and will, we hope, open up possibilities for investigating how people in diverse historical, cultural, and religious contexts navigated and managed being in pain. Pain, we suggest, can be viewed as an emotion.7 Since the 1950s a range of different approaches to pain have developed in different disciplines. Increasingly, neurological biological approaches to pain, which have argued that pain is a physical process of nociception (that is, activity in the neurones that responds to noxious or damaging stimuli) have come under increasing scrutiny. Melzack and Wall’s famous and highly-influential Gate Control Theory of Pain, which argued that pain perceptions were modulated through sensory gates in the spine before being transmitted to the brain, has been shown to be highly problematic.8 More recent physicalist approaches, such as the (different) approaches of Hardcastle and Woolf, have also come under fire.9 The traditional cartesian model has been, then, all but rejected in favour of a more holistic approach in which pain is seen as both physical and psychological, and an experience that is shaped by cultural presuppositions, emotional states, social conventions, and the language in which it is framed. Approaching pain in this multifarious way has been extremely productive, paving the way for a wide variety of work within humanities disciplines as well as the behavioural and social sciences.10 One of the features of this recent approach has been to underscore the way it cuts across assumed boundaries between mind and body. It has long been recognised that psychological states influence, and are themselves influenced by, physical perceptions. The current definition of pain published by the International Association for the Study of Pain, emphasises that pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience”.11 A range of scholars have built on this combined approach to emphasise that pain might best be seen as a type of emotion. Pain’s division into mental and physical categories is a function of what Morris terms the ‘Myth of Two Pains’.12 Further neuroscientific research has stressed that the brain does not draw distinctions between psy7 8 9 10 11

12

As suggested in section 1 and recently by Crislip (2021) and others. Melzack & Wall (1965). For its problems, see: Mendell (2014). Woolf (2007), 27–35; cf. Hardcastle (1999). The bibliography is extensive: a few important examples include: Scarry (1985), Morris (1991), Rey (1993), Bourke (2014). Quoted by King in Chapter 3 (present volume, 46 (accessed 10.5.23)). For the quote, see: https://www.iasp‑pain.org/resources/terminology/#pain. For the use of an older version of this definition see Morris (1991), 16; cf. Bourke (2014), 11–12. Morris (1991), 9.

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chological and physical pain. According to Cavero, pain is a unique sensory and emotional experience far more complex than a simple ‘alarm system’.13 This volume’s contextualisation of pain narratives against recent research into the historical contingency of emotions draws, then, on a body of scholarship that sees pain as an emotion and seeks to undermine clear distinctions between physical and mental pain. A second major feature of this understanding of pain as an experience is the way in which it facilitates questions about the variety of individual experiences. If pain experience lies at the intersection of mind/emotion/psychology, the body, and culture, then it is possible to investigate how different pain experiences emerged in diverse social and cultural contexts or historical periods. Lucy Bending has shown for the nineteenth century that contemporaneous discourses in Victorian England framed the meaning and experience of pain in very different terms, with religious interpretations and treatments of the experience diverging widely from those of medical or scientific contexts.14 In contemporary western culture, the trend has been to medicalise pain experiences. As commentators have pointed out, this has often left the patient and their experiences marginalised in an attempt to diagnose and treat ‘the problem’ and has very often excluded other ways of understanding and navigating painful experience. In the ancient world, as we shall see, pain is clearly a medical problem of considerable import: it is a major feature of the Hippocratic Corpus, and remains a significant diagnostic tool for imperial and late-antique doctors; and it is treated at length in discussions of mental and physical illness, pregnancy and child-birth, and pharmacology.15 What is particularly telling, however, is the way in which various medical approaches to pain co-existed across the ancient world, and the ways in which medical and other ways of approaching pain repeatedly intersected. As this volume demonstrates, there were multiple ways of understanding, managing, and navigating pain experience in different

13

14 15

Cervero (2012), 9–17; see 9 for the quote. For the distinctions between emotional and physical see Cobb (2017), 25, with n.60–61 (p. 169) for further references. For the application of these approaches to ancient Christian suffering: Cobb (2017) and Crislip (2021). Bending (2000). Pain in Hippocratic works: Horden (1999), 295–315, Villard (2006); Byl (1992); Scullin (2012); Baltussen (present volume, 23–31). Imperial medicine: (for Galen) e.g., Roby (2016), King (2017); for other doctors see Rey (1993), 25–30 (Celsus); Lewis (present volume, 160– 161, 165–166). One figure who sits at the boundary of medicine but has not been treated in this volume owing to the sheer volume of scholarship on his Sacred Tales and experience of pain is Aelius Aristides: on this figure see the following key works: King (1999), Downie (2017), King (2017), 129–155, Petridou (2020). For parturition, see: Roby (2016), King (2017), 16 n.45 for references in Soranus; on pharmacology see: King (1988).

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times (Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Late-antique) and contexts (religious, cultural, philosophical, and literary) across the ancient world; we show both how these approaches developed over time, and also how they were closely and productively inter-related to each other. A central component of the experience of pain—and the historical investigation of it—is the complex relationship it has with communication and representation, especially (but not solely) in language and narrative. Much has been made of language and narrative, of course, because of its presumed capacity (or inability) to provide access to individual pain experiences. Elaine Scarry’s aphorism—that pain is ‘unshareable’ because “pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it …” has, over the past three decades been modified with a more nuanced view.16 Sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have all emphasised that pain has a far more productive relationship with language than Scarry acknowledges.17 This has involved exploring not only the ways in which pain helps shape language and modes of representation, but also attending to the ways in which narrative plays a central role in shaping the meaning of pain for sufferers. As Bourke put it in relation to the historical value of narratives in a clinical context: When pain narratives were valued as part of the healing process, they were encouraged, elicited, and elaborated upon as signs of hope for patient and physician alike … It is these languages of pain that open up a world of meaning, informing us of how people in the past, and today, experience their suffering.18 One aspect of these narratives is that they provide access to individual experiences and meanings. It is worth remembering that they are also historically contingent, reflecting broader ways of describing and narrating suffering, as well as reiterating cultural beliefs about pain. The narratives of the ancient world reflect, repeat, and develop in fascinating ways their community’s language for expressing pain perceptions and experiences, they reflect contemporary ideas about the pain experience itself, and, tellingly, they employ narrative forms from, make allusions to, and create inter-textual connections across ancient literature and culture. In other words, attending to the narratives of pain in the ancient world will not only help reveal the meanings and frame16 17 18

Scarry (1985), 4. For explicit engagement with Scarry’s position, see inter alia Kleinman, Das, and Locke (1997), xiii–xiv and Bourke (2014), 4–5. E.g. Kleinman, Das, & Locke (1997), xiv. Bourke (2012), 2421.

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works that helped ancient people ‘experience their suffering’, but also give us an understanding of the diversity of the pain experience across ancient cultures.

3

Structure and Themes

The volume is structured around three themes which are arranged broadly by chronology and subject matter. In group 1 (Chs. 2–4), contributions focus on early thinking about the language and representation of pain, especially early Greek thought and the Hippocratics, Aristotle’s school, and Nicander’s Alexipharmaca. In group 2 (Chs. 5–9), contributors examine a variety of literary texts from the Classical and Roman periods that have hitherto not been discussed much from this perspective: Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae, Seneca the Younger, Lucian’s Podagra, Archigenes’ On the Affected Parts and Alexander of Aphrodisias’Problemata Ethica. In the final third group (Chs. 10–12), we turn to Christian literature: the Peristephanon of Prudentius, Ignatius of Antioch, St. Augustine, and the affective lexica of Christian theology. The present volume offers a coherent and interconnected set of papers in the way that a number of threads or themes connect the various chapters. Many of the chapters in this volume touch upon these themes. For instance, all chapters have something to say regarding the language of pain and many chapters refer to the interaction of physical pain and mental distress. But other chapters have a strong focus upon key thematic clusters, which can be outlined as follows. An important theme is the vocabulary and imagery of pain. Chapter 2 (Baltussen) lays the groundwork for this by charting various labels for pain in the Greek lexicon from Homer to the Hellenistic age; in particular, his chapter examines the rise of the term λύπη, while using this linguistic angle to explore subjective aspects of pain phraseology. Chapter 3 continues this focus with King’s analysis of the language and imagery of the Hellenistic poet Nicander’s Alexipharmaca, a treatise on poisons, showing the ways in which a rich vocabulary of suffering was constructed from both the language of medicine and myth. In Chapter 7 Lewis charts a further broadening of the vocabulary of pain in the work of the imperial physician, Archigenes of Apamea, who widened it to include other sensations and physical phenomena which the patient was experiencing. In the concluding chapter (Chapter 12) Zecher explores how the chief Greco-Roman terms relating to pain (λύπη/dolor) were further modified and enhanced by Christian writers to generate a new language of pain. Various chapters within the volume examine the experience of pain from the perspective of both the physician and patient/sufferer. While King in Chapter 3 and Lewis in Chapter 7 analyze the ways in which descriptions of pain can be

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employed as a tool for diagnosis (for varieties of poison or parts of the body that require attention), King and Lewis also lay emphasis upon the role that the patient has in communicating their pain experience. Baltussen (Chapter 2) explores the ways in which the experience of the sufferer influences the choice of pain terms and Petridou (Chapter 6) uses Lucian’s comic take on gout, the Podagra, as a vehicle to investigate the excruciating experience of this pain in the ‘lived bodies’ of its sufferers. The chapters above, and others in the volume, also address the complexity of the phenomenon of pain: in one way, we discuss how it stands on the bridge between sensation and emotion and how physical and mental suffering interact, in another we explore pain and social identity. Courtil (Chapter 5), in his examination of the role of pain (dolor) in Roman Stoic philosophy, analyses the differences between pain as a sensation and as an emotional response of the sufferer. Cheng (Chapter 8) shows how Alexander of Aphrodisias in his Problemata Ethica experiments with various ways of grasping the nature of pain, and argues that pain in the Pr., despite remaining an important opposite of pleasure, is more multifaceted than Aristotle allowed in his examination. Various chapters also investigate the intersection of physical pain and emotional distress and explore how pain can disrupt boundaries and fragment identity. These include: King’s Chapter 3 and Clarke’s Chapter 9 (on how the pain of poisons and of torture, respectively, induce mental distress by rupturing the barrier between inner and outer) and Petridou’s Chapter 6, which explores the destructive effect that gout pain has on a sufferer’s social identity. The social status of the victim and the role of the audience or onlookers in validating or denying pain, is also a major focus of Lawrence’s Chapter 4 which contrasts two controversiae of Seneca the Elder in order to demonstrate how the status of victims and their relationship to Seneca’s elite male audience affects the type of story that is told about their pain and the level of sympathy that is generated. As well as demonstrating the complexity of the phenomenon of pain, several chapters also focus upon how people can deal with pain by thinking about it in a different way. Courtil (Chapter 5) examines the Stoics’ claim that humans can contain pain within its natural boundaries by never assenting to the idea that pain is an evil, and by viewing pain with reason rather than passion. Clarke (Chapter 9), in contrasting two descriptions of torture (one pagan, the other Christian), shows how the Christian martyr Vincent reconceptualizes his pain so that it becomes an instrument of positive transformation and union with Christ. McMeekin (Chapter 10) argues that Ignatius of Antioch’s anticipation of torture and death should be understood in Stoic terms as a form of prophylactic mental preparation to enable him to endure the pain and distress. And

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Clark (Chapter 11) demonstrates that, in Augustine’s view, pain happens by the will or permission of God and that for good people it forms part of their spiritual training. And finally, all the chapters of the volume highlight the interconnection between different areas of ancient culture. The epic poetry of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid for instance, was a constant theme throughout constructions of pain, especially in the medical and Christian contexts (Nicander, Prudentius, Ignatius, Augustine). One of the points to emerge from the Christian narratives section is how much these works bring together themes that had either been latent or (in some cases) explicit in earlier pagan literature written in both Latin and Greek and part of poetic, rhetorical, or medical and philosophical discourses. In this way this volume helps to show how Christian writers adopted the vocabulary and conceptions of pain from the pagan past and adapted them to meet the needs of an emerging era.

References Bending, L. (2000) The Representation of Bodily Pain in Late Nineteenth-Century English Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourke J. (2012) ‘Languages of pain’, Lancet 379 (9835): 2420–2421. Bourke, J. (2014) The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Braund, S. & Most, G. (eds) (2004) Ancient Anger: Perspectives from Homer to Galen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Byl, S. (1992) ‘Le Traitement de la douleur dans le Corpus Hippocratique’, in J.A. LopezFerez (ed.), Tratados Hipocraticos. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, pp. 203–213. Cairns, D. (2008) ‘Look Both Ways: Studying Emotion in Ancient Greek’, Critical Quarterly 50: 43–62. Cervero, F. (2012) Understanding Pain: Exploring the Perception of Pain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chaniotis, A. (2018) ‘The Social Construction of Emotion: a View from Ancient Greece’, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 24: 56–61. Cheng, W. (2018) ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle’, in W. Harris (ed.), Pleasure and Pain in Classical Times. Leiden: Brill, pp. 174–200. Coakley, S. & Shelemay, K. (eds) (2007) Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cobb, L.S. (2017) Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Crislip, A. (2021) ‘Pain, Emotion, and Identity in Early Christianity’, Journal of Early Christian History Vol.: 1–25. Downie, J. (2017) ‘The Experience and Description of Pain in Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi’, in J. Wee (ed.), The Comparable Body: Analogy and Metaphor in Ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman Medicine. (Studies in Ancient Medicine 49). Leiden: Brill, pp. 247–274. Fotheringham, L. (2006) ‘Cicero’s Fear: Multiple Readings of Pro Milone 1–4’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 57: 63–83. Frede, D. (1992) ‘Disintegration and Restoration: Pleasure and Pain in Plato’s Philebus’, in R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 425–463. Graver, M. (2001) ‘Managing mental pain: Epicurus vs Aristippus on the pre-rehearsal of future ills’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17: 155–177. (with commentary by G. Striker, pp. 178–184). Graver, M. (2002) Cicero on the Emotions. Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hardcastle, V. (1999) The Myth of Pain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harris, W.V. (2018) (ed.) Pain and Pleasure in Classical Time. Leiden: Brill. Harris, W.V. (2001) Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Horden, P. (1999) ‘Pain in Hippocratic Medicine’, in J. Hinnells & R. Porter (eds), Religion, Health and Suffering. London: Kegan Paul International, pp. 295–315. Kazantzidis, G. & Spatharas, D. (eds) (2022) Medical Understandings of Emotions in Antiquity: Theory, Practice, Suffering. Ancient Emotions iii (Vol. 131). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Keefe, P.R. (2021) Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. London: Picador/Pan MacMillan. King, D. (2017) Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. King, H. (1999) ‘Chronic Pain and the Creation of Narrative’, in J. Porter (ed.), Constructions of the Classical Body. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 269–286. King, H. (1988) ‘The Early Anodynes: Pain in the Ancient World’, in R. Mann (ed.), The History of the Management of Pain. Carnforth: Parthenon Publishing Group, pp. 51– 62. Kleinman, A. & Das, V. & Locke, M. (eds) (1997) Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Konstan, D. (2006) ‘The Concept of “Emotion” from Plato to Cicero’, Méthexis 19: 139– 151. Konstan, D. (2008) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks. Studies in Aristotle and Greek Literature. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. [repr. of 2006].

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Melzack, R. & Wall, P. (1965) ‘Pain mechanisms: a new theory’, Science 150: 971–979. Mendell, L. (2014) ‘Constructing and deconstructing the gate theory of pain’, Pain. 155 (2): 210–216. Morris, D.B. (1991) The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Peponi, A. -E. (2002) ‘Mixed pleasures, blended discourses: poetry, medicine, and the body in Plato’s Philebus 46–47c’, Classical Antiquity 21(1): 135–160. Perkins, J. (1995) The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge. Petridou, G. (2020) ‘The “Lived” Body in Pain. Illness and Initiation in Lucian’s Podagra and Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi’, in V. Gasparini, M. Patzelt, R. Raja, A. -K. Rieger, J. Rüpke & E. Urciuoli (eds), Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World: approaching religious transformations from archaeology, history and classics. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 237–259. Rey, R. (1993) Histoire de la douleur. Paris: La Decouverte. Roby, C. (2016) ‘Galen on the patient’s role in pain diagnosis: sensation, consensus, and metaphor’, in C. Thumiger & G. Petridou (eds), Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. (Studies in Ancient Medicine 45). Leiden: Brill, pp. 304– 324. Scarry, E. (1985) The Body in Pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scullin, S.E. (2012) Hippocratic Pain. [Dissertation] Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Villard, L. (2006) ‘Vocabulaire et représentation de la douleur dans la Collection hippocratique’, in F. Prost & J. Wilgaux (eds), Penser et représenter le corps dans l’Antiquité. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 61–78. Winsor Leach, E. (1993) ‘Absence and Desire in Cicero’s “De Amicitia”’, The Classical World 87: 3–20. Woolf, C. (2007) ‘Deconstructing Pain: A Deterministic Dissection of the Molecular Basis of Pain’, in S. Coakley & K. Shelemay (eds), Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 27–35.

chapter 2

Labelling Pain: Early Greek Concepts from Homer to the Hellenistic Era Han Baltussen

1

Expressing Pain1

Until a few decades ago, the topic of pain in the archaic and classical Greek world had received limited attention, and a primary focus had been on philosophy and pleasure.2 The recent upsurge of the study in ancient emotions has made scholars in the humanities more aware of the issues and questions, and the importance of a more integrated, multi-disciplinary line of investigation.3 Much remains to be investigated in literary, philosophical and medical texts regarding pain, not just the language of pain but also to integrate some of the modern research on emotions where possible. The broader aim of this volume is to change focus from theory and treatment to the subjective side of pain experiences, referred to in this volume as pain narratives.4 With this in mind the present chapter explores the vocabulary of pain from Homer to the Hellen1 I would like to thank the participants of the Exeter workshop in April 2018 for valuable feedback, in particular Wei Cheng, when I presented my first sketchy draft on the topic. I am also grateful to Daniel King for his perceptive comments on the penultimate draft which saved me from several errors, and to my research assistant Mary Harpas for finding much good material on pain in the Hippocratic Corpus. 2 See the important volume edited by Harris (2018) Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times, the long article by Holmes (2007), and King (1998), 118–131. For Plato, see Frede (1992), Peponi (2002) on pleasure, or Wolfsdorf (2015) and Erginel (2011), (2019) on pain; for Aristotle, see Agonito (1976), Dow (2011), Cheng (2019). Cf. Bourke (2012) for the last three centuries. This chapter cannot cover the whole range of classical philosophy since Plato (well-studied) and Aristotle (well-studied, but more for the concept of pleasure) are huge topics; but see esp. Cheng’s contribution (this volume, Ch. 8) with references. 3 E.g., Hadjistavropoulos & Craig (2004); Moseley (2007), Coakley & Shelemay (2007), cf. Holmes (2007) on wounds in the Iliad, Budelmann (2006) on famous examples in tragedy (Heracles, Philoctetes) and the disconnect with Homer (p. 123). For an emphasis on context, see Konstan (2006), x. But his reliance on an example from a dialectical handbook like Topics 4.5 (42–43, with n.6) to clarify the issue is not ideal for capturing broad trends. 4 A pioneering study utilising anthropological insights to explore subjective perspectives on medicine in literary sources is Lloyd (2003). I cannot go into the philosophical research based on, and interacting with, neuroscience (e.g., Seth [2013], Klein [2015]).

© Han Baltussen, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004677463_003

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istic age, so as (1) to examine its semantic range and diversity and how these may inform us about the particular choices of words in certain contexts when ancient authors label pain, and (2) to determine whether—and if so, how— reflecting on pain in the emerging philosophical and medical traditions after Homer led to a clearer conceptualisation of pain.5 Before I delve into these issues concerning the meaning, role, and development of the early concept of ‘pain’, it will be imperative to place some restrictions on our vast subject. Obviously, a comprehensive treatment of all the materials over five centuries is not feasible. My primary concern is to sketch the linguistic and conceptual antecedents in such a way that it may assist in familiarising the reader with the terms and concepts found in the Greek world, in particular the domains of early Greek philosophy and medicine. The areas included are in need of additional analysis, whereas areas not included (drama, lyric poetry, and the classical philosophers Plato, Aristotle) have been studied well and would provide too much material to fit in.6 By selecting the more salient texts for scrutiny and evaluation, viewed against the background of Homeric epic, we will be able to examine the growing diversity and sophistication in the use of terms labelling pain, in particular with the rise of a more rational approach in philosophical and medical thought. Lastly, an important fact to keep in mind is that ancient notions of pain arose in a world which had to cope with pain without painkillers.7 The absence of effective pain killers is of course an important difference with the modern era; the use of silphium, willow bark or opium remained unpredictable and ineffective.8 This fact also raises the question whether this meant that the average Greek or Roman had developed a higher pain threshold or was taught to have one, which would suggest a cultural origin of pain resistance. The question about a pain threshold is important, because the two possible explanations mentioned (the one naturalistic, the other cultural) already indicate how one can approach the topic from very different angles (and we cannot even exclude

5 Nicole Wilson’s article (2013) is very succinct and not always correct in its translation of terms. 6 For drama and lyric poetry see e.g. Cerroni (2019) on ἄλγος who identifies a significant shift in Pindar (222) and has brief notes on Sophocles and Aristophanes (223–229). Plato and Aristotle have been studied (cf. n.2 and below nn.41–44, 50) and would each require separate treatment. Theophrastus’ works On pleasure according to Aristotle and Another book on pleasure (D.L. 5.43) are not extant (but some fragments may have survived, see FHS&G 549–556; on 556 see Cheng [2017]). See also the chapters by Lawrence and Cheng (this volume). 7 Cf. the opening page of Harris (2018a), 55. 8 On opium see, e.g., Scarborough (1995) and Keyser (2022) with further literature; on willow bark, Mackowiak (2000).

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that both are involved).9 Moreover, modern perspectives on a topic like pain add further complexity, in that recent research has found that pain can be studied more fruitfully from a multi-disciplinary perspective.10 However, such an inquiry cannot be attempted here in full, even if recent work can be brought in for the purpose of offering theoretical grounding, in particular studies on pre-modern pain.11 The selective approach has led to the following order of discussion in sections 2–5: by way of background (a kind of ‘origin story’), I will use selected passages to illustrate how Homeric epics refer to pain (§ 2), how early Greek thinkers conceptualised pain as sensory and affective (§ 3), to what extent that they were aware of certain nuances in the process of feeling and acknowledging pain. I then argue that the articulation of pain in philosophical and medical sources (§4–5) seems to show a progression, based on a growing awareness of the cognitive and emotional entanglements of pain in correlation with a new model of the mind.

2

Archaic Pain Terms: Homeric Variations

In the surviving texts of the ancient world, we find considerable linguistic diversity, reflected in the range of terms used to label different types of pain. The Homeric epics Odyssey and Iliad offer a useful starting point to explore pain terms as the earliest Greek evidence for pain language. Suffering, trauma, and anxiety are major themes in both works, and, as we will see, the various types of discomfort already cover both the physical and the mental. This early stage of Greek thought usually refers to pain in a way typical of the pre-scientific mind. The experience of pain is not theorised or described in reflective terms, nor is the language analysed: various terms are used habitually and, while broad patterns can be detected, this usage cannot be easily categorized in a rigorous way.12 Unsurprisingly, in the Iliad many (but certainly not all) cases occur in 9

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The point regarding integration of pain into a meaningful account within one’s own life story is connected to how the experience of pain becomes integrated into one’s own belief system; while this is an important aspect for the right attitude to coping with pain, relevant to our understanding of its function in human life, this point cannot be developed in this chapter. E.g., Hadjistavropoulos & Craig (2004); Coakley & Shelemay (2007), and Ch. 1 (present volume), p. 4, and next note. Rey (1995), Perkins (1995), Moscoso (2012), Harris (2018) and Cobb (2017). Nutton (2013), 37 usefully comments: “The Homeric poems afford us a glimpse of medical ideas and practices long before any of our strictly medical literature, and […] it can be

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the battle scenes and are the result of weapons impacting on bodies: the battleintensive books Il. 5, 11, 13 and 16 abound in painful wounds, described in great detail.13 While in many cases we learn about the physical effect (for example, blood spurting out), we learn less about the emotional effect on the victim. The poet’s language may sometimes hint at such effects by way of adjectives to describe the weapons (a “bitter arrow” 13.591; a “sharp sword”, etc.) or the target area (a “soft hand”, 5.336). These are useful qualifiers, since it would be implausible to assume that all adjectives are added merely for metrical reasons. At Il. 13.546–549, the soldier is wounded in a vein located along the back and his response strongly suggests an emotional state in his dying moment, in which his gesture betrays his distress about the enforced separation: “so he sprawled into the dust backward |reaching out both hands to his beloved friends” (13.548f.).14 The most important and frequent pain terms in Homer are ἄλγος (79), ἀλγέω (8), ἄχος (45), πόνος (55), ὀδύνη (28 = 21 Il. + 7 Od.), and πάθος (10), παθέω (51).15 Among these occurrences some examples can illustrate the most salient features of the Homeric usage and variety of terms. Translators of Homer are not infrequently seen to specify in English what type of pain it is (sharp, dull, unbearable, etc.), even when the Greek phrasing lacks any adjectives.16 Such speculative additions are based on the specific context and not always problematic, but occasionally modern notions may have crept in. Battle wounds are described with almost clinical accuracy in the Iliad, notably in book 13. Arrows and spears pierce all kinds of body parts, showing a remarkable knowledge of the internals of the human body, of both organs and

13

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used to illustrate what the poet’s audience would have expected or taken for granted in the late eighth century.” For instance, at Il. 5.19, a spear strikes between the nipples (cf. 145); 55–56, spear into the back and “driven through to the chest beyond it”; 80–82, arm cut off; 98, arrow into the shoulder, etc. On pain from wounds in the Il. see Holmes (2007); on wounds, see Salazar (2000). Not noted in Holmes (2007) who at 46 suggests (against Morris) that the poet has no opportunity to “focalize the experience of the warrior”. Her comment that “the agony of dying goes unremarked by Homer” (53) seems to overlook examples like this which imply a certain pathos. For ἄλγος I have benefitted from the useful analysis in Cerroni (2019). See also Holmes (2007) 47 for a list of terms. I note that ὀδύνη only appears in Il. books 4, 5, 11, 12 and 15, in which intensive battles occur. And, strikingly, A TLG search produces no results in a search for λύπη: it does not occur in the Homeric epics. Frequent adjective: ἀλεγεινός (Il. 4.99; 5.658, etc.); less frequent: δυσηλεγής (Il. 20.154; Od. 22.325). See Appendix for a fuller list for Hippocratic works.

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less discrete parts.17 Thus the number of blows to head, arms, and torso is considerable, though expected and less interesting than those cases in which the details Homer offers reveal much about the era’s knowledge of the organs, such as the lungs, liver, brain, bladder and heart.18 It has long been remarked that the poet seemed to have extensive medical knowledge. He even puts a name to some who attend to wounds (Machaon and Podalirius, Il. 11.514 f., 832f.; Paeon, 5.899; Patroclus bandaging Eurypylus, 11.828–832).19 Despite the abundance of severe trauma, emotional impact is far less often recorded.20 And yet, in the Iliad, arrows are said to be “bringers of dark pains” (ἀβλῆτα πτερόεντα μελαινέων ἕρμ’ ὀδυνάων, 4.117, cf. 4.191), Aphrodite can be wounded and suffer pain (ἀχθομένην ὀδύνῃσι, 5.354), body and spirit can be affected by pain (κῆρ ἀχέων ὀδύνῃσι, 4.397–401), and even medicines can be harsh means for healing (ὀδυνήφατα φάρμακα, 5.401).21 Removing arrows is also very painful due to the multiple barbs, for instance, when Odysseus “pulled a fast arrow from Diomedes’ foot”, so that “the hard pain came over his flesh” (βέλος ὠκὺ| ἐκ ποδὸς ἕλκ’, ὀδύνη δὲ διὰ χροὸς ἦλθ’ ἀλεγεινή, 11.398–399). But the description offers an external perspective, reporting the pain from an observer’s point of view.22 A passage at Il. 2.269–291, which gives us a better clue as to the impact of pain, offers the famous scene of Odysseus scolding and beating Thersites, because the latter spoke before his turn and without due respect for King 17

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20 21

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E.g., 13.412 a spear hits the liver; 13.546–547 “shore away a vein which runs up the back all the way to the neck”; 13.591 a spear “struck between the navel and genitalia” (cf. Holmes 2007, 47 n.4) and the entrails poor out, etc. For a comprehensive study of ancient war wounds, see Salazar (2000), Majno (1975). E.g., brain Il. 12.183–186. See Lorenz (1976), Laser (1983). See Nutton (2013), 37 with n.1, on how this was already discussed in antiquity (e.g., by Plutarch, Galen, Eustathius). At n.7 Nutton points out that sometimes incantations were used (Od. 19.455–458). Cf. Harris (2018), 58. Holmes (2007) aims to evaluate this issue around major trauma lacking a comment on pain. Not noted in Holmes (2007). Cf. Il. 5.900; 15.394 φάρμακ’ ἀκέσματ’; 22.94 κακὰ φάρμακ’ (= Od. 10.213); Od. 1.261 φάρμακον ἀνδροφόνον; 10.394 φάρμακον οὐλόμενον. The frequent dative plural form (ὀδύνῃσι) is probably chosen because it fits the hexameter very well. At Il. 16.524 Glaucon asks Apollo to “put his pains to sleep” (κοίμησον δ’ ὀδύνας), upon which Apollo αὐτίκα παῦσ’ ὀδύνας (528). Such an indirect report which projects (or imagines) the effect of a sensory impact can even be found at Il. 12.205–206, concerning an animal: when an eagle has caught a snake and carried it off (δράκοντα φέρων ὀνύχεσσι), the snake was writhing (ἰδνωθεὶς) so much that it managed to bite the eagle, which then drops it “since it was in pain of the bite” (ἀλγήσας ὀδύνῃσι). The scene is interpreted as an ‘omen’. For ἰδνωθεὶς in the sense of “double up in pain” said of Thersites, see Il. 2.266 and below.

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Agamemnon. Thersites is said to be both in pain and tearful, “looking about helplessly” (ἀλγήσας δ’ ἀχρεῖον ἰδὼν ἀπομόρξατο δάκρυ, 2.269).23 Here the poet describes the effect of the beating by showing a behavioural response, and the clues in this one line suggest that it concerns both physical pain (from the beating with the sceptre) and emotional distress (the shame of public punishment and a feeling of abandonment). At 291ff. Odysseus goes on to speak about the possible return home and he uses πόνος to describe a mental state of longing for home, calling it “a hard thing to be aggrieved with desire for returning home” (ᾖ μὴν καὶ πόνος ἐστὶν ἀνιηθέντα νέεσθαι)—an ironic comment from the man who in the Odyssey will be plagued by such ‘nostalgia’ in his own longing to return home after the war. A surprising case in Il. 11.267–272 compares the pain of Agamemnon’s wound on his arm from a spear to the pangs of childbirth.24 The passage is worth quoting in full (tr. Lattimore) [T1]: Αὐτάρ ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἕλκος ἐτέρσετο, παύσατο δ’ αἷμα, ὀξεῖαι δ’ ὀδύναι δῦνον μένος Ἀτρείδαο. ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἂν ὠδίνουσαν ἔχῃ βέλος ὀξὺ γυναῖκα, 270 δριμύ, τὸ τε προιεῖσι μογοστόκοι Εἰλείθυιαι, Ἥρης θυγατέρες πικρὰς ὠδίνας ἔχουσαι, ὡς ὀξεῖ’ ὀδύναι δῦνον μένος Ἀτρείδαο. [= 268] But after the sore place was dry, and the flow of blood stopped, The sharp pains began to break in on the strength of Atreides. Just as a sharp bolt of pain descends on a woman in labor, 270 the bitterness that the hard spirits of childbirth bring on, Hera’s daughters, who hold the power of the bitter birth pangs, So the sharp pains began to break in on the strength of Atreides. A modern reader is immediately struck by the comparison between the male and female pain experience.25 Even if we consider it a helpful speculative analogy, we may well question the simile’s appropriateness. Men may have ‘sym23 24

25

ἀλγήσας appears only in three other places and always in first position of a line (Il. 8.85; 12.206; Od. 12.27). Surprising, because other cases of wounds to arms and legs do not elicit such a comparison (cf. e.g., Glaucon at Il. 16. 509–526). The comparison has a parallel (echo?) in Euripides when Medea makes the claim that she “would rather stand three times in the line of battle than bear a child a single time” (Medea 250–251). See also Holmes (2007), who calls it “one of the Iliad’s most perplexing similes” (49) and rightly points out that this simile is “unique” (71–74, at 71).

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pathy pains’ (as it is called nowadays26), but they will never experience the intense physical pain that often accompanies childbirth. The comparison of Agamemnon in full battle (his ‘aristeia’) to a woman remains awkward,27 and not one that could be turned into a compliment (as the modern mind might do). Holmes argues that it is “the distinguishing invisibility [of the pain] that may recommend these darts to the description of Agamemnon’s wound and the strange pain caused by the closure of the wound”.28 I suggest that what the two cases have in common is that this kind of pain is outside of the person’s control. Whether the comparison based on the chosen words (“sharp”—ὀξεῖαι δ’ ὀδύναι; “bitter”—πικρὰς ὠδίνας) holds for the nature or intensity of the pain remains uncertain. Remarkably, the effect of wounds on the immortals can be quite strong. At least in the case of Aphrodite, when she is wounded by Diomedes (5.334 ff., “the spear tore the skin driven clean on”, 337), the response is highly emotive and suggests both physical and mental pain: “she gave a shriek and let fall her son [= Aeneas] she was carrying” (343), “the goddess departed in pain, hurt badly” (352), or “still aggrieved in her heart, she mounted the chariot” (364).29 In the Odyssey too the use of ὀδύνη shows how this word is labelling serious pain and agony. In book 9, the mighty Cyclops experiences great pain, when his single eye has been destroyed by a sharp, hot stake (9.413–416), as the emphatic line at 9.415 shows (Odysseus narrates) [T2]:

415

ὣς ἄρ’ ἔφαν ἀπιόντες, ἐμὸν δ’ ἐγέλασσε φίλον κῆρ, ὡς ὄνομ’ ἐξαπάτησεν ἐμὸν καὶ μῆτις ἀμύμων. Κύκλωψ δὲ στενάχων τε καὶ ὠδίνων ὀδύνῃσι, χερσὶ ψηλαφόων, ἀπὸ μὲν λίθον εἷλε θυράων, thus they spoke and went their way, my dear heart laughed that my name and cunning trick had managed to deceive.

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27 28 29

On sympathy pains or Couvade syndrome, see, e.g., Chase, Fusick & Pauli (2019) who mention that is occurs “most often during the first and third trimesters” (168). For ancient cases of Couvade syndrome, see Papadakis & Manios (2020). In his commentary Hainsworth notes (1993, 254) “there is an inescapable irony at several levels in the comparison”. Holmes (2007), 72. δόρυ χροὸς ἀντετόρησεν (337); ἠ δὲ μέγα ἰάχουσα ἀπὸ ἕο κάββαλεν υἱόν (343); ἡ δ’ ἐς δίφρον ἔβαινεν ἀκηχεμένη φίλον ἦτορ (364). On “divine wounds” see Holmes (2007) 61, 64 with n.39; on the gods afflicted by emotions, see for instance Lateiner (2002) and my conclusion.

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But the Cyclops, groaning and suffering in anguish, groped with his hands and took away the stone from the door …30

The vivid and detailed description of the violent annihilation of the eye is reinforced by alliteration (verb and interior object: ὠδίνων ὀδύνῃσι) and two striking similes from carpentry (for the hot stake) and tempering of iron (for the sizzling blood); the line is clearly meant to convey the intensity of the resulting pain.31 The similes effectively make an unusual event more familiar by using everyday examples of activities known to most people. Evidence for physical distress continues at line 440 f. with the same word, when he is releasing the sheep from the cave (the sheep which carry Odysseus and his companions underneath their bellies): “their master, distressed with grievous pains, felt along the backs as they all stood up before him” (ἄναξ δ’ ὀδύνῃσι κακῇσι | τειρόμενος πάντων ὀΐων ἐπεμαίετο νῶτα | ὀρθῶν ἑσταότων). The pains are now labelled κακός, “bad, evil”, either because they are intense (a sensory aspect) or considered the result of a bad act (a moral aspect: he refers to Odysseus as ἀνὴρ κακὸς at 453). It is possible that both aspects are in play, as they gradually emerge one after the other over the course of these three lines. The mental impact is revealed in the self-pity of Polyphemus when he appeals to his favourite ram for compassion, imagining that the animal, which is uncharacteristically leaving last, does so out of empathy for his master’s suffering. Thus physical pain and psychological aftermath are clarified by way of verbal expressions of suffering (415) and an act of emotional projection. These selective Homeric examples illustrate well how pain terms are differentiated to some extent, but that their usage is also a matter of formulaic conventions. Intensity is regularly expressed by way of adjectives, which may indicate that the nouns themselves fail to convey such a quality. The distinction between mental and physical pain can be identified in some cases (Aphrodite, Cyclops), but it is clear that the vocabulary does not diversify in proportion to the kinds of pain the works are trying to describe.32

30

31

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tr. Wilson (2018). Earlier at line 403, when the other Cyclopes responded to his wailing, they too described him as “distressed, pained” (ἀρήμενος, partic. perf. pass.), an emotional state they infer from hearing him express his misery in words and tone of voice (the word also occurs at Il. 18.435; Od. 6.2; 11.136; 18.53, 81; 23.283). For the similes, see 9.384–387 of a carpenter drilling into wood (τις τρυπῷ δόρυ νήιον ἀνὴρ), and 391–394 of a black smith tempering an axe in cold water (ἀνὴρ χαλκεὺς πέλεκυν … ἐν ὕδατι ψυχρῷ βάπτῃ | φαρμάσσων). To use modern terminology, the intended semantic range is not covered by the available lexemes.

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Early Greek Philosophers on Pain, Discomfort, and Its Counterpart

That pain is a puzzle was nothing new to ancient philosophers. Like today, ancient attempts at defining and explaining its existence, its nature and its causes illustrate how much of a challenge it was to reach clarity about it.33 The general approach among early Greek thinkers was to regard pain (and its companion concept, pleasure) as notions connected to both physiology and psychology.34 The language of pain reflects the problem of semantic scope and meaning transfer: conceptual changes for terms such as πόνος (~ dolor) and λύπη (~ aegritudo) often result from efforts to analyse these emotions.35 Generally speaking, early articulations of pain and distress were fairly intuitive and descriptive, but continued to gain in nuance and semantic range. An important question to consider is whether pre-Classical philosophers applied the same terms to both mental and physical pain. As we have already seen, context can be a crucial differentiating factor in how one should interpret and translate a word like lupē, which in the classical authors can cover both types of embodied experience (for example, ‘being cut’ and ‘heart ache’). But was there no clear conceptual boundary yet between the physical and the mental? And can we ascertain the extent to which they understood how one’s state of mind influences the degree of physical pain experienced (below section 5)? I will suggest that the shift to a more explicit distinction between the two was in part brought on by a new theoretical approach to the mind, a hypothesis which finds some support in the advent of λύπη during the fifth century as a label for non-physical pain. Our information for early Greek philosophers requires careful exegesis, first and foremost because our earliest accounts predominantly originate in reports by Aristotle and Theophrastus. The two Peripatetics pioneered the historiography of early Greek philosophy but did not write their accounts in a dispassionate way: they mostly created them as preparation for their own philosophical expositions. This means that we need to assess carefully which parts of their reports might be close(st) to the original ideas. I refrain from saying ‘words’ because we only have a limited number of texts with a claim to being ‘fragments’ of the lost works.36 In general, dialect forms and paratextual clues

33 34 35 36

For the subtleties involved see below section 5, and Lewis (Archigenes) and Cheng (on the commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias, second c. ce) in the present volume. On the pairing of the two concepts, see also Harris (2018), “Introduction”. See also Courtil’s chapter in the present volume on the Stoic use of these terms. On how much has been lost see Mansfeld (1999), 3–5 (but the whole chapter is instructive).

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(“Democritus says …”) can assist in this process of triage, as do comparisons with other sources, often from later authors.37 A highly relevant text for our purposes is Theophrastus’ treatise evaluating early Greek ideas on sense perception.38 In his De sensibus (Sens.) he discusses the connection these thinkers made between sensation on the one hand, and pain and pleasure on the other. More often than not, Empedocles and others focus on pain and its counterpart pleasure (ἡδονή) for the evaluation of these physiological processes, emphasising the sensory over affective properties of perception. Several cases will allow us to grasp the key points of their considerations regarding the mechanisms of human perception as they understood them. At Sens. 16 Theophrastus proceeds to discuss pleasure and pain in the account of Empedocles’ thought.39 He reproaches Empedocles for not being consistent in his account of these notions (οὐδε τὴν ἡδονὴν καὶ λύπην ὁμολογουμένως ἀποδίδωσιν), for Empedocles explains pleasure by similarity (for example, light in the eyes meets light outside and is pleasant, if it is of “the same kind”), and pain by contrast (calling them “enemies”, ἐχθρά). Theophrastus implies that Empedocles is not keeping to his basic principle (perception through like-bylike). Against Anaxagoras (Sens. 29) Theophrastus constructs a critical argument that turns on the antithesis ‘natural’ (κατὰ φύσιν) vs. ‘unnatural’ (παρὰ φύσιν), and on the criticism that the sensory stimulus is not clearly distinguished from the affective responses it evokes. The first point concerns the scope of a claim. According to the report (Sens. 29; cf. 17) Anaxagoras held that all perceptive actions are accompanied by pain (or distress: μετὰ λύπης). After Theophrastus brings in concrete evidence to counter this claim (the opposite is often true), he also argues that such a claim is counter-intuitive (Sens. 31, οὐτ’ ἐκ τῶν εὐλόγων), since perception agrees with nature (an Aristotelian view), that is, it works without violence or pain. Thus, a more general consideration is used to counter Anaxagoras’ claim: the paradoxon that pain is natural is countered by the endoxon that pleasure is according to nature. In a further κατὰ φύσιν argument (Sens. 33), Theophrastus blames Anaxagoras for treating unnaturally what is actually according to nature since excess is not the natural state of affairs. While it is clear and generally agreed (φάνερον καὶ ὁμολογουμένον) that we do experi-

37 38 39

For earlier work on this issue see, e.g., Mansfeld (1999), Baltussen (2000), (2006), (2019). Theophrastus’ Sens. in Diels (1879), Stratton (1917; 19642). Though limited, we have two cases for Empedocles’ pain terms in fr. 95 DK, ἀλγήδων (twice), cf. Harris (2018). Theophrastus offers what we now regard as ‘testimonia’, see Baltussen (2019).

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ence pain or pleasure during acts of perception, this does not mean that either of these is more connected to perception. In fact, Theophrastus thinks that neither is. Concluding, Theophrastus adds one further remark to justify his doubts about Anaxagoras’ position: “it would be impossible to discern if understanding were to be accompanied constantly by pain or pleasure” (Sens. 33). The views examined so far indicate how the philosophers were searching for a new understanding of the world and creating novel ideas on how we perceive it by theorizing about perception itself. Yet their basic assumptions about the mechanisms of sensation and affection are not yet very far removed from the Homeric notions, in that they envisage the nature of the process as mechanical, while the boundary between the sensory and the affective remains porous.40 When we turn to Theophrastus’ discussion of Democritus (c. 460–c. 410? bce), we encounter some very interesting views on pleasure and pain which reveal a shift away from the archaic world of Homer and even from the emerging medical positions of the fifth century bce. Against this background, Democritus makes some advances by taking a hard look at the importance of pain (and pleasure). Let us consider a passage in which his novel perspective becomes apparent [T3]: For those who get their pleasures from their bellies, exceeding the measure in food and drink and sex, the pleasures are brief and short-lived, … but the pains are many (αἱ δὲ λῦπαι πολλαὶ) or they always have the same desire for the same things; and when they obtain what they desire, the pleasure swiftly departs … (Clement, Paedagogus iii xviii 35 = 68B235 DK; tr. Barnes) From this passage it is clear that he already infused the terms of pleasure and pain with a moral quality, clarifying the correlation between bodily experiences and good or bad behaviours. Pleasure and pain would now become viewed as the motivating forces in what humans pursue and avoid. This ‘ethical turn’ was taken up in the fourth century, when Plato famously claimed that “the most natural concerns of humankind are pleasures, pains and desires” (Laws 732e).41 While trying to describe more accurately what bodily pain is, he brought in the notion of motivation, as Evans has pointed out, and came close to a useful description when he said that “bodily pains 40 41

Another interesting transitional figure was Diogenes of Apollonia (late fifth c. bce). Transl. Saunders in Cooper (1997). In his Philebus he focused on establishing what bodily pain or discomfort was, defining it as a disruption of a desired physical or mental state, Frede (1992). Cf. Warren (2007).

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[are] … disturbances which are intrinsically motivating”.42 So Plato occupies an important position in the development of articulating the phenomena of pain by allowing some pleasures and pains to be mental processes, not just physical ones. His prose has a marked increase in the use of words with the stem λυπ-.43 In the Hellenistic world, we see that the greater focus on moral issues reframes the investigation into pain and pleasure (see section 5). The connection between physiology and moral attitudes, which had been initiated by Plato and developed by Aristotle, became a central focus in ethical discourse: pain (perhaps in the general sense of discomfort) and its counterpart, pleasure, often function as explanatory forces driving behaviour.44

4

Hippocratic Soundings: Pain, Its Risks, and Its Causes

As one might expect, the Hippocratic Corpus (HC) contains abundant evidence on pain, first and foremost mapping its role in physical suffering.45 Many of the writings mention pain in various capacities, as a diagnostic factor or as one in the cluster of symptoms, taken as indicative of the patient’s illness. As Scullin has shown, the role for pain can be a sign of something going wrong in the body.46 For instance, to identify the location at which ‘diseased’ substances or a wayward substance and body part are interacting where they are not supposed to (for example, miscarriage at Mul. i 25, or internal suppuration/empyema at Morb. i 15, 17). But when it came to interpreting the ‘symptoms’ of pain, analysis was difficult: “Diagnosing pain is a particular point of anxiety for Hippocratic physicians.”47 It is important to remember that the overriding perspective in the HC is not that of the patient. Most comments on pain (I come to the specific terms shortly) are observations filtered through the physician’s viewpoint, and rarely do we catch a glimpse of the patient’s express statement on their experience

42 43

44 45

46 47

Evans (2007), 71. Frede (1992), 445 highlights mental processes. TLG shows there are 320 forms deriving from the stem λυπ- in Plato: the noun 179 times and the adjective λυπηρός 21, the remainder are verb forms. For this aspect of pain in Plato, see n.43; in Aristotle, see De an. 3.7, 431a8–11, EN 7.11–14; 10.1–5. For the Stoics, see Courtil (this volume, Ch. 5). On Epicurus see below p. 32. Cf. Villard (2006). A TLG search for the most important terms reveals their frequency: πόνος 499; ὀδύνη 623; ἀλγεῖν 120; παθήμα 61. All translations for the Hippocratic texts are taken from the Loeb Classical Library, unless stated otherwise. Scullin (2012), 26–27, 113–114. Webster (2016), 170. Cf. Byl (1992).

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of pain. In other words, we can only access those indirectly. Thus, in On the Nature of Women, the physician’s knowledge of pain (ὀδύνη) in the patient must be based on patients’ reports, but the text rarely mentions this contribution to the diagnosis.48 As we will see, this limits our access to the emotional or affective aspect of pain (the subjective experience), but the observations by doctors will inform us at least about the diagnostic place of pain. Much more analysis is needed than what I can offer here. The terms for pain most frequently used in the HC are ὀδύνη (623) and πόνος (499), while the numbers for ἄλγος (10) and λύπη (11—the noun) are much lower.49 The first two terms do not dominate the vocabulary of subsequent periods.50 Such high occurrence cannot be discussed in full. I will highlight some broader patterns and individual cases to offer a preliminary assessment of their usage of these terms. We may start by observing that πόνος seems to take on a new meaning, given its original sense of “hard work, toil, labour, exertion, exercise”, without an explicit link to pain. For ὀδύνη the semantic range seems simpler, usually relating to bodily harm or psychological discomfort. Examples for both can demonstrate the diverse use of each. Medical explanations for pain pointed to a range of causes. Within the framework of the theory of humours (found mostly in Nat.Hom., VM, Morb. iv, Nat.Puer., Genit.)51 and mechanisms of balance and opposites, the central idea connected to bodily pain and suffering was ‘change’ (of balance, disposition, state of an organ or interconnected body parts), which could take several forms and was regarded as “an objective event within the body” [T4]:52 (a) things entering the body (air, Flat. xi), change of the dunamis of substances in the body (a destructive force which causes ὀδύναι, Loc.Hom. 42). 48 49

50

51

52

See below (text to n.58) for a few clear examples in On Barenness 410 where there is questioning of the patient by the physician. Numbers based on TLG search for αλγ- which produces 379 instances (including verb ἀλγέω and nouns ἀλγήμα [201], ἀλγηδών [13]); for λυπ- we find λυπέω (45), λύπη (11 + λυπήματα 1), and λυπήρος (3). Another frequent term is ἐπώδυνος (TLG, ἐπώδυν-, 53 in HC). See also Linka & Kaše (2021), for a statistical analysis of the HC; Cerroni (2019), 231–233 comments on the “rather measured use of ἄλγος in Jewish-Hellenistic literature” (incl. the Septuagint). Plato prefers lupē (n.43); according to Cheng (2017, 53) Aristotle seems to prefer (in order of high to low frequency) lupê, ponos, or pathos (the latter with different meanings, see Konstan 2006, 3–4; Rapp 2002). Works that seem less interested in humours per se notably include the surgical treatises (On Wounds in the Head, On Joints, On Fractures, Mochlicon, In the Surgery). I am grateful to Mary Harpas for advice on this point. See also Scullin (2012), 6–7, 13–28 (esp. p. 20 “objective event within the body”).

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(b) internal parts changing place (uterus moving out of its natural position, Mul. ii 28). (c) bitter or astringent humours such as phlegm or bile in the wrong place in the body (Aff. 16). The author of Ancient Medicine was keen to find out the causes of pain when discussing the deleterious effect of cheese (VM xx.23–27, my emphasis) [T5]: πονηρόν ἐστιν βρῶμα τυρός. πόνον γὰρ παρέχει τῷ πληρωθέντι αὐτοῦ, ἀλλὰ τίνα τε πόνον καὶ διὰ τί καὶ τίνι τῶν ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐνεόντων ἀνεπιτήδειον. It is not sufficient to learn simply that cheese is a bad food, as it gives a pain to one who eats a surfeit of it; we must know what the pain is, the reasons for it, and which constituent of man is harmfully affected. The author also had a rather idiosyncratic view which held that it is not the place that is responsible for pain in the body, but rather that “all the causes of the pain can be reduced to one, namely, it is the strongest foods that hurt a man most and most obviously, whether he be well or ill” (VM vi.15).53 Many other authors in the HC mention the ‘wrong place’ as a cause of pain. In On the Nature of Man the author warns that, whereas health is the “duly proportioned” mingling of the four χυμοί, “pain is felt (ἀλγεῖ) when one of these elements is in defect (ἔλασσον) or excess (πλέον) or is isolated (χωρισθῇ) in the body without being compounded with all the others” (Nat.Hom. iv.1–9). One of the longer passages describing painful experiences is found in the treatise on women (Mul.). At Mul. i 3 pain is described with three different terms (ὀδύνη, ἀλγεῖν, and πόνος) [T6]: When the menses cease to appear, pain (ὀδύνη) occupies the lower belly, and a heaviness seems to be lying there; the woman suffers terribly (ἐκπάγλως πονέει) in her loins and flanks. […] If no flux follows, the woman will appear to be pregnant, and when she has intercourse with her husband, she will suffer a pain (ἀλγεῖν) that seems to indicate that some object is lying there. A weight (βρῖθος) is present in her belly, and it protrudes, rising up just as in a woman who is pregnant; she suffers heartburn, particularly after the fiftieth day, and pain (πόνος) from time to time occupies her belly down from the navel, as well as her neck, her groin and her lower back. (Mul. i 3, Loeb) 53

πάντα δὴ τὰ αἴτια τοῦ πόνου ἐς τὸ αὐτὸ ἀνάγεται, τὰ ἰσχυρότατα μάλιστά τε καὶ ἐπιφανέστατα λυμαίνεσθαι τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ τὸν ὑγιᾶ ἐόντα καὶ τὸν κάμνοντα.

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It is not easy to determine the word choices for these various pain phenomena: does ὀδύνη reflect a type of pain for that location? Is the verb ἀλγεῖν chosen over ὀδυνάω? Would πόνος be reserved for intermittent pains? None of these questions can be answered in the positive without further investigation, but it is possible that ἄλγος is for more specific pains, while πόνος is used for general descriptions, even if this passage does not seem to allow for such an interpretation. Sometimes the nature of this location (especially, hardness or softness) and the intensity of pain arising there is emphasised, as a passage in Ancient Medicine shows. It provides a detailed description of the correlation between the two (VM xxii.42–xxiii.1, tr. Loeb, modified) [T7, emphasis mine]: For when the flatulence does not fill a part so as to be at rest, but moves and changes its position, it cannot be but that thereby noise, and perceptible movements take place. In soft, fleshy parts occur numbness and obstructions, such as happen in apoplexy. […] (49) But owing to (50) its tenderness and the blood it contains, the part cannot be free from pain (οὐ δύναται ἄνευ πόνων εἶναι), and this is why the sharpest and most frequent pains (ὀδύναι τε ὀξύταται καὶ πυκνόταται) occur in this region, and abscesses and tumours are very common. Pain also occurs in intense form under the diaphragm, but much less so (καὶ ὑπὸ φρένας ἰσχυρῶς, ἧσσον δὲ πόλλον). For the diaphragm is a broad and resisting region, of a stronger and more sinewy texture, and so there is less pain (διὸ ἧσσον ἐπώδυνά ἐστι). The notion that hardness or softness influence the intensity of pain may originate in earlier theories of impact in the case of physical processes: the first part, where wind (flatulence or air) moves around and hits something, may be compared to sixth-century ideas about the air impacting on the cartilage in the ear—a process which in its essential workings is very mechanical.54 The second comment “pain also occurs in intense form under the diaphragm, but much less so” (καὶ ὑπὸ φρένας ἰσχυρῶς, ἧσσον δὲ πόλλον) is puzzling in its wording but the juxtaposition of the adverbs (ἰσχυρῶς, ἧσσον) must be deliberate. At the same time, it relates to the affected area, “the diaphragm”, said to be “a broad and resisting region” (that is, firm). In the context of surgery, physicians often speak about extreme pains, and not only because surgical interventions were done without anaesthetic. But

54

E.g., how Empedocles imagined the impact of air on the inner ear (Theophrastus, Sens. 9–10). Aristotle holds a similar view in more general terms at de An. 2.8, 420b13–15.

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how did they know that a patient was suffering? We have to assume they learned from the patient’s reaction to certain procedures.55 At Fract. xliii the author sounds a warning about a dislocated shoulder which, if not treated correctly, could prove fatal [T8, emphasis mine]: if the humerus is dislocated backwards—this occurs rarely, and is the most painful of all (ἐπωδυνώτατόν τε τοῦτο πάντων), most frequently causing continuous fever with vomiting of pure bile, and fatal in a few days (θανατωδέων καὶ ὀλιγημέρων).56 […] If you happen to be quickly on the spot, you ought to extend the elbow forcibly, and it goes in of its own accord (αὐτομάτως ἐμπίπτει). But if he is feverish when you arrive, do not reduce, for the pain of a violent operation would kill him (κατακτείνειε γὰρ ἂν ἡ ὀδύνη ἀναγκαζομένου). (tr. Loeb) This remarkable passage suggests that pain under certain conditions (fever, forced resetting of a dislocated limb) can be fatal.57 This claim is of considerable interest, as it seems to ascribe some agency to pain itself within the body, that is, represents pain not just as a sufferer’s awareness of an affect (perception), but as having an effect on the individual independently. At Art. lxix.23–26, the author discusses amputation and warns, “don’t cut any living flesh because many patients have died from the associated pain”. Pain as the cause of death would be very serious indeed! In On the Nature of Women we find out that physicians know about the pain (ὀδύνη) of a patient, which must (also) be based on what the patient reports, but the text gives no indication of how this kind of input occurs. This aspect of gaining information from patients remains mostly invisible. The only clear passages I could find in which we hear about a form of question and answer with the patient are On Barenness, 410 L. (= p. 332–333 Loeb), “by palpating and questioning” (ψηλαφήσει δὲ μάλιστα γίνεται δῆλον καὶ ἐρωτήσει περὶ τῶν εἰρημένων [sc. σημεῖων]), and ibid. 415 L. (= p. 338–339 Loeb), “each of these conditions is revealed by question and answer” (Δῆλον δὲ ἑκάτερόν ἐστι τῇ ἐρωτήσει καὶ ἀποκρίσει).58

55 56 57 58

For similar cases of diagnosis by inference, see Lewis’ chapter in the present volume. Cf. below n.58. For θανατώδης, cf. Progn. 8.2–3 (ἐπώδυνοί τε εἰσί κάρτα καὶ θ.) and passim (TLG θανατώδ-, 114 cases). The optative κατακτείνειε with ἂν presumably can also express possibility, not just future (Loeb: “will kill”). On the extent to which patient testimonials factored into Hippocratic medicine, see Lloyd (1983), 76 with n.68 (gynaecological works), Holmes (2010), 168 f., Webster (2016), 168. Letts

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Specific uses of the verb ἀλγέω can serve to illustrate the variety of translations it evokes when the contexts suggest variations of pain [T9, emphasis mine]:59 (a) Morb.Sacr. vi.4–9 [location] The brain of man, like that of all animals, is double, being parted down its centre by a thin membrane. For this reason, pain (ἀλγεῖ) is not always felt in the same part of the head, but sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and occasionally all over.60 (b) Vict. ii lxvi.60–66 [link to fatigue] Fatigue pains (κόποι) from accustomed exercises arise in the following way. Moderate toil is not followed by pain; but when immoderate it dries the flesh overmuch, and this flesh, being emptied of its moisture, grows hot, painful (ἀλγεῖ) and shivery, and falls into a longish fever, unless proper treatment be applied. (c) Vict. ii lxxii.1–4 [like fatigue] The symptoms of surfeit are sometimes as follow. The body aches (ἀλγεῖ), in some cases all over, in others that part only of the body that happens to be affected. The ache (ἄλγος) resembles the pain of fatigue (κοπιῆν).61 (d) Fract. iii.52–54 [observation by touch] Of course, the hand of an experienced practitioner would not fail to recognise the prominence (at the fracture) by touch; also, there is a special tenderness (ἀλγεῖ) at the prominence when palpated. The contextualised translations clearly show that ἀλγέω can represent a fairly broad semantic range, but in all cases it concerns physical pain, even if the creative flourishes of the translators add a plausible dimension beyond the

59 60

61

(2016), highlighting Rufus of Ephesus (b. 70ce) who wrote the only known work on the dialogue between patient and physician, points to a few additional examples in the HC (p. 96, n.56). I note that ἀλγέοντες (“those suffering”) can refer to patients. Cf. Morb. iv 4 (550 L.), location and pain: “If much phlegm remains in the head, this will provoke great pain (πολλὸν πόνον) thereby occupying the vessels, whereas if only little remains, it will not do this, although it will give some indication more or less serious.” (Tr. Loeb) On the link between fatigue and pain, see also Theophrastus, On fatigue lines 5, 8, 26, 51, 67, 80–82, 86, 88 (ed. Sollenberger in Fortenbaugh et al. [2003], 265–277).

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physical. While probably narrated by the physician, here too we suspect that knowing about the pain sometimes originates in a verbal statement or physical reaction by the patient (b, c), where a correlation is assumed between pain and fever (b), or a comparison is used to clarify the nature of the pain (c). But rather than just ask for verbal feedback, the physician could also find out for himself by examination, discovering a patient’s reaction to the hands-on examination (probing or palpating in passages a and d). When we turn to examine the usage of πόνος in the HC (499 instances), descriptions become more vivid and varied. One reason for this difference might be that it is combined with adjectives to represent the intensity of pain (cf. T2 above). At least in two clear cases we can recognise this tendency [T10, emphasis mine]: (a) Coac. 138: Τῶν πυρεσσόντων οἷσιν ἐρυθήματα ἐπὶ προσώπου καὶ πόνος κεφαλῆς ἰσχυρός, καὶ σφυγμὸς φλεβῶν, αἵματος ῥύσις τὰ πολλὰ γίνεται· οἷσι δὲ ἄσαι, καὶ καρδιωγμοί, καὶ πτυαλισμοί, ἔμετος. οἷσι δὲ ἐρευγμοί, φῦσαι, ψόφοι κοιλίης, καὶ ἐπάρσις καὶ ἐκτάραξις κοιλίης. In fever patients who have redness of the face, a strong pain in the head, and throbbing of the vessels, a haemorrhage often occurs; if they have nausea, heartburn, and salivation, there will be vomiting; if they have eructations, winds, noises of the cavity, and swelling and diarrhoea. (b) Int. 50: καὶ τὸ σῶμα κοπιᾷ ὡς ὑπὸ ταλαιπωρίης καὶ ἐν τῇ κοιλίῃ βάρος ἴσχει καὶ πόνος ἰσχυρός· καὶ οἱ πόδες οἰδέουσι. the body suffers weariness, as if from exertion; in the cavity there is heaviness and a violent ache; the feet swell. Again, the observed problems concern physical ailments, and they seem to combine with other physiological problems. From this sampling of the two primary terms in HC we can extract a few preliminary insights, even if a broader study is needed to draw more definitive conclusions (cf. p. 13). Firstly, the use of ἄλγος and πόνος suggests that they predominantly label physical pain. The physicians’ preoccupation with physiology shines through in their descriptive accounts. Secondly, the patients’ suffering seems to have a subordinate role in their observations and diagnosis. A third and final term allows us to gain a glimpse of the evolving terminology and semantic extension. While in later texts it can serve to express several emotions (that is, psychological or mental states), in the HC we observe that

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λύπη has limited use, yet is clearly on the rise.62 Earlier I pointed to its complete absence in Homer.63 Most modern discussions will emphasise the importance of λύπη (pairing it with dolor as its Latin equivalent),64 but it remains to be seen to what extent λύπη in HC already labels mental states. That it is a latecomer on the scene of pain expressions suggests that it was becoming a linguistic marker for mental suffering.65 The noun λύπη is found in eight passages. Three provide some evidence for its use for a mental affliction, two of which are clear [T11, emphasis mine]: (a) Regimen in Acute Diseases (Acut.(Sp.) 40; tr. Potter, Loeb) ἢν δὲ … γουνάτων βάρος ἢ σώματος ὄγκος παρὰ τὸ ἔθος, ὅ τι ἂν συμβαίνῃ μήτε ὑπὸ πότων μήτε ὑπὸ ἀφροδισίων μήτε ὑπὸ λύπης μήτε ὑπὸ φροντίδων μήτε ἀγρυπνιῶν· ἢν μέν τι τούτων ἔχῃ αἴτιον, πρὸς τοῦτο ποιέεσθαι τὴν θεραπείην. If there is … heaviness of the knees or fullness of the body beyond what is normal, give hellebore, provided that the condition is not the result of drink, venery, grief, anxiety or sleeplessness; if the condition has one of these as its cause, let the treatment be directed against that. (b) Epidemics iii xvii Case xi (tr. Jones, Loeb) Ἐν Θάσῳ γυνὴ δυσάνιος ἐκ λύπης μετὰ προφάσιος ὀρθοστάδην ἐγένετο ἄγρυπνός τε καὶ ἀπόσιτος καὶ διψώδης ἦν καὶ ἀσώδης. ᾤκει δὲ πλησίον τῶν Πυλάδου ἐπὶ τοῦ λείου. In Thasos a woman of gloomy temperament, after a discomfort with a reason for it, without taking to bed lost sleep and appetite, and suffered thirst and nausea. She lived near the place of Pylades on the plain. (c) Cf. Epidemics iii xvii Case xv (tr. Jones, Loeb) In Thasos the wife of Delearces, who lay sick on the plain, was seized after a discomfort (ἐκ λύπης ἔλαβεν) with an acute fever with shivering (πυρετὸς φρικώδης ὀξὺς) 62 63 64

65

According to the TLG the noun λύπη occurs 8 times, the noun λυπήματα once, the cognate adjective λυπηρός thrice, and the verb once. Above n.15. See Konstan (2006), 245–246, and the chapters by Clarke, Courtil, and Lewis in the present volume. But Cicero is said to have paired aegritudo with λύπη (see Tusc. 3.61, with Graver 2002, 13). Konstan (l.c., previous note) points out that Aristotle used lupê for ‘pain’, and refers to Harris (2001, 343) who claimed lupê is ambiguous (a claim in turn qualified by Konstan). Galen would develop it further as a label for ‘anxiety disorder’ (see Mattern 2016).

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The limited number of instances in HC may constitute an early stage of its usage. The term may occur in a list of mental afflictions (On Humours ix.15, οἱ φόβοι, αἰσχύνη, λύπη, ἡδονή, ὀργή, ἄλλα τὰ τοιαῦτα; On Breaths i.1o, οἱ δὲ νοσέοντες ἀποτρέπονται διὰ τὴν τέχνην τῶν μεγίστων κακῶν, νούσων, λύπης, πόνων, θανάτου), or even denote the unpleasant feeling from “a tongue out of tune” (On Regimen i xviii.23), but may also appear as a result of “fellow-feeling” (διότι συμπάθησις ὑπὸ λύπης ἐοῦσα ὀχλεῖ, “fellow-feeling at grief causes distress”). These examples show how λύπη became the more appropriate term for the kind of suffering closest to mental discomfort, not physical trauma.

5

Sceptical about Sensory Impressions and Pain

To track another stage in the evolving notions of pain assessment, it is worth selectively reviewing some materials from Hellenistic philosophical schools.66 The period offers uneven evidence from various schools of thought, with one in particular constructing a very unusual theory of pain. These examples will illustrate how both the diversity and sophistication increased as time progressed. Our evidence for Aristotle’s followers in the Peripatos, while fragmentary, offers some intriguing insights into the analysis of pain and related phenomena. One interesting case may be mentioned. Strato, the third head of the Peripatetic school, comments on the aspect of sensation and behaviour in a curious (and for antiquity quite unique) observation.67 From a passage preserved in Plutarch’s On the Intelligence of Animals 3, 960e–961a (fr. 62 Sharples), we learn about a peculiar notion held by Strato, when Plutarch discusses sensation and cognition. In support of his argument that animals lacking a rational capability to choose or avoid would be better off without sensation and distress (λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀλγεῖν), he reports a claim from Strato, as follows [T12]: there is an argument of Strato the natural philosopher which shows that not even sensation is present at all in the absence of mind (οὐδ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι τὸ παράπαν ἄνευ τοῦ νοεῖν). For frequently we fail to notice letters when we traverse them with our sight and words that fall on our ears, because we have our mind on something else.68

66 67 68

See Prost (2004). As indicated in n.2, I lack the space here to cover the classical philosophers (Plato and Aristotle). A useful discussion of Strato in Modrak (2011). Text and translation in Strato ed. by R.W. Sharples in Desclos & Fortenbaugh (2011), 147.

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The topic Strato comments on probably originates in Aristotle’s discussion of the soul functions and which of these presupposes any of the others.69 Strato is said to realise how we may lack awareness of a sensory experience, a step towards considering what it means not to feel pain when in shock after trauma (perhaps comparable to what we now call ‘dissociation’). As before with the early Greek philosophers (see section 3), the analysis combines sensory and affective aspects of human perception (percepts and the response). But this time we hear about a form of distraction which is rare (cf. Aristotle, EN 10.5): obviously this example of reading is not about pain per se, but about sensory awareness failing due to mental distraction. A close contemporary, Epicurus, seems to have considered similar mechanisms of mental ‘malfunction’ (for lack of a better word), but his approach shows a more active involvement. Epicurus is famous for having (i) at the core of his philosophy an elaborate theory of pleasure which is viewed as highly cerebral and not the conventional hedonistic notion, and (ii) for offering a four-part cure (his Tetrapharmakos) to cope with life’s vagaries and anxieties. At the end of his own life, Epicurus was forced to apply his own ideas to himself, since he suffered from kidney stones (urethritis), a very painful and at that time incurable condition.70 He also describes how he is coping with the pain in his Letter to Idomeneus (preserved in Diogenes Laertius) [T13]: When he was about to die, he wrote the following letter to Idomeneus [fr. 138]: “as we pass this blissful day that is the last of my life, we wrote the following for all of you. The effects of urethritis (στραγγουρία) and dysentery have kept me company without at all abating at all their extreme intensity (πάθη ὑπερβολὴν). Arrayed against all of that is the joy in my soul at the memory of the discussions we have had (ἀντιπαρετάττετο δὲ πᾶσι τούτοις τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν χαῖρον ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν γεγονότων ἡμῖν διαλογισμῶν μνήμῃ). You in particular [sc. Idomeneus], in the way your lifelong attachment to me and to philosophy warrants, take care of the children of Metrodorus.” That is the will he made.71

69 70

71

Arist. de An. 3.3 (perceiving and understanding are not identical) and 3.7 (pleasure and pain linked to the sensory). He describes his experience in such detail, that it allowed modern physicians to determine the condition: Bitsori & Galanakis (2004) refer to it as “urinary calculus” (466) or “renal disease” (468). But strangury refers to “dysuria or retention” (468). D.L. 10.22. Transl. Stephen White (2021) 418. For the potential self-contradiction and solution see O’Reilly ( forthc.).

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Epicurus creates an opposition between intense pain and joy, claiming the latter actually helps to battle the intense pains plaguing him. The joy (χαῖρον) is brought on by his memories of philosophical conversations (ἡμῖν διαλογισμῶν μνήμῃ) but also, it seems, by memories of Idomeneus’ friendship.72 This example importantly places the power of self-directed mental action in opposition to (passive) physical suffering. My third and last example concerns a rather obscure school of thought, the Cyrenaics, founded by a follower of Socrates, Aristippus of Cyrene.73 The specific examples from a discussion on the question whether the senses are reliable, are relevant here, as is the critique a later Peripatetic offered. The Cyrenaics were highly sceptical about perception. This had happened before in Greek philosophy (for example, Parmenides) but using the notion of pathē (παθή), “affections” or “feelings”, they theorised about what humans can sense of the world and hence know about it. Their view was that pathē are affections in a special sense, labelling a passive experience of a sensible object (perhaps “stimuli”); they considered only these to be “apprehensible” by humans.74 Although this implies some kind of criterion of infallibility regarding the pathē as internally perceived experiences,75 their sceptical attitude towards such external sensory stimuli, their exact source or origin, had major consequences for their philosophical theorising.76 The most striking report comes to us from the fourth century ce bishop Eusebius, who in his Preparatio Evangelica (PE) explains that said ‘stimuli’ concern sensory effects which most people would consider painful. What we learn about the Cyrenaic view Eusebius reports in part via the critical comments of the Peripatetic Aristocles against the Cyrenaics. Aristocles formulated two distinctive points, so far as the evidence allows us to make out.77 Both aim to ridicule the position by extracting absurdities from the basic premises (Eusebius, PE xiv. 19.1, italics mine) [T14]:

72 73 74 75 76

77

On χαῖρον, “joy”, see also O’Reilly ( forthc.). It is uncertain whether he wrote anything (D.L. 2.84), and the ‘school’ did not last long (mid-third c. bce). The best modern study is Tsouna (1998) who in Ch. 2 clarifies the subtleties and pitfalls of the vocabulary. As Voula Tsouna put it (1998, 53): “their contents are directly given to consciousness and are incorrigibly true”. It precluded them from further developing the traditional areas of philosophy at the time, that is, physics and metaphysics, because they claimed they “could not determine from these affections what caused them or even what they were.” I base my summative account on Tsouna (1998), 62–70 and the discussion of Aristocles in Chiesara (2001).

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These philosophers maintained that they know nothing, just as if a very deep sleep weighs down on them, unless somebody standing besides them struck them or pricked them. For they say that, when they are being burnt or cut they know that they are undergoing something (καιόμενοι γὰρ ἔλεγον ἢ τεμνόμενοι γνωρίζειν ὅτι πάσχοιέν τι). But whether the thing which is burning them is fire or that which is cutting them is iron they cannot tell. (tr. Tsouna) I have here italicised the two parts which seem to represent the Cyrenaic claim as to what one can know in relation to sensory impressions. Aristocles’ objections make clear how pathē, in previous authors used for “feeling”, “affection” or “pain”, focus on the fact that they exclude knowing anything about the nature of the external objects that cause the stimulus, yet they will become aware of it. Note how the examples refer specifically to unpleasant experiences such as being struck, pricked, or burnt. In other words, pathos here refers to a painful bodily experience (πόνος), not just a neutral experience of being affected in some way. Aristocles also emphasised that they used pleasure and pain for choice and avoidance but that they do not “welcome every pleasure and shun every pain” (Eusebius, PE xiv. 21. 3, αὐτοί γέ τοί φασιν οὐ πᾶσαν ἡδονὴν ἀσπάζεσθαι καὶ πάντα πόνον ἐκτρέπεσθαι.)78 In addition, the counterargument turns on extending the claim from “undergoing” (παθεῖν) to “knowing that they are undergoing something” (γνωρίζειν ὅτι πάσχοιέν τι), pointing out that this must mean they are contradicting the narrower state of awareness (“undergoing something”). In other words, Aristocles claims there is more to the experience than feeling something, but also an added awareness of a propositional nature: “for if they did not [sense something], they would not be able even to say that they know only pathos; … For ‘I am being burnt’ is an expression (logos), not a pathos.” (Eusebius, PE xiv. 19.1).79 Obviously, this is a shrewd move, although one might object that the negative claim about the cause was merely there to clarify the absence of an expected consequence, articulated in conventional language of perception. The point is also raising a more fundamental issue: at the meta-level of making claims about experiences (“I am aware that I am affected”), Aristocles exploits the inconsistency that may arise, urging that these should not contradict the claims related to the experiences themselves (“I am affected”).80 78 79 80

Text and translation from Chiesara (2001), 46–47. Transl. Chiesara (2001), 33. For an analysis of Aristocles’ reasoning and how the Cyrenaics might respond, see Tsouna (1998), 63–65.

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In addition, Aristocles goes on to extract a further inconsistency, by stipulating that the claim involves three factors: the percipient, the awareness of the affected percipient (‘self-awareness’) and the knowledge of the external objects, inferring that awareness of pain includes awareness of the percipient. Lastly, the Cyrenaic claim also implies that they cannot sufficiently differentiate between pain and pleasure, how it is that we know who is undergoing a sensation, or how we are aware of the sense organs themselves. These examples, then, illustrate precisely how the modes of reasoning about pain became more detailed and subtle, and evaluation of its nature and the implications for the limits of perception and knowledge more sophisticated. While in Homer there is no analytical perspective on pain, subsequent analyses move from crude oppositions to nuanced observations on human physiology (perception), its associated stages, and the impact this evolving understanding of the sensory had on the affective and cognitive outcomes.

6

Conclusion

My dual aim for this chapter was (1) to examine the semantic range and diversity of pain terminology, and (2) to track the diachronic developments (if any) of the terminology over time and assess whether the conceptualisation of pain showed any advancement. The term ‘labelling’ in the title covers best how pain was given linguistic expression (nouns, verbs, adjectives) that refer to unpleasant sensory and affective experiences, conventionally translated as “pain” (ἄλγος, πόνος), “distress”, “grief” (λύπη), etc. This approach was chosen to offer a wider exploration in terminology and because language is the best available starting point to reach an understanding of embodied experiences in history, which are themselves, strictly speaking, inaccessible to us. It allows us to explore the issues around meaning, semantic range and diversity. The language-based angle using simple nouns may not cover emotions that have been paraphrased, or conveyed in analogy, simile, or another kind of periphrastic description. Ancient authors have described human emotions in the earliest writings we possess, but there is not always one easy expression used to label them: for instance, Zeus may be grieving in Il. 16.459, but his ‘emotional state’ (bereavement) is hinted at by mentioning “tears” (ψιάδας), and there is no single word for ‘grief’ to be found in the passage.81 It is clear that different words may describe the same sensory or affective experience.

81

On Zeus’ grief, see Lateiner (2002) who speaks of “tears of blood”, “human-like affect”, and

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On the first aspect it emerged that higher frequency (preference?) for particular terms can be observed in Homer, the Hippocratic Corpus, and the philosophers, although some pain terms are consistently shared by all. On the second objective—the question whether ancient reflection on pain increased in the emerging philosophical and medical traditions after Homer—the answer is affirmative. Here I highlighted in particular the appearance of labels for psychological or mental states. We saw that the vocabulary did undergo changes over time, from terms that applied to physical pain only to terms that could label both physical and mental pain, with a pronounced role for λύπη. Two striking points emerged in the process of illustrating selectively the terminology and its development. Firstly, we observed that λύπη for mental suffering makes its appearance in the Hippocratic Corpus and can later be seen to appear in authors like Anaxagoras (late fifth century), Plato, Aristotle (fourth century), the Stoics and Epicureans (third century).82 From its first humble appearance (for example, Hesiod, Works and Days 401; Aesch. Supp. 442) it seems to be used in the sense of ‘distress’—a mental affliction—and in particular grief.83 A second interesting insight emerged in the discussion of the philosophers. The concept ‘pain’ would almost always occur in a context which emphasized the behavioural (and hence ethical): pleasure and pain came to be regarded as basic drivers behind behavioural patterns of pursuit and avoidance. Following the initial connections already introduced by Democritus (T3), Plato and Aristotle developed their analysis of pain and pleasure as foundational principles for behaviour, discussed in their works on ethics.84 Overall, the ancient evidence reveals a diverse palette of representations to express the experiences of pain. We also saw that different levels of intensity, particular contexts, and specialised domains (technical language) existed, and there is some evidence of linguistic expressions for phantom pain, dissociation, and lack of focus (distraction) to allow us a small window into such unusual observations. Pain terms in ancient Greek literary, philosophical and medical texts represent an evolving group of lexemes which are subject to a number of shifts and changes. In broad terms, several ‘stages’ can be distinguished (though not in any rigorous or deliberate sense). The Homeric usage prefers the nouns

82 83 84

“he grieves again” (p. 43); cf. his n.5, where other translators are quoted also speaking of “tears” (Pope), “tears of blood” (Lattimore). For Plato and Aristotle see above n.2 and n.6. For the Stoics see Graver (2007); for the Epicureans, Graver (2001). Its opposite ἀλυπία, “absence of grief”, is found in the (reconstructed) title of Galen’s work (Boudon 2005). See above n.44.

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ἄλγος and πόνος, the adjectives ἀλεγεινός and δυσηλεγής, and the verbs ἀλγεῖν, πονεῖν, but did not offer any instance of λύπη. Across these provisional stages, the most common pain terms could be seen to expand their semantic range or become replaced or redundant. The Hippocratic Corpus offers examples of variety that are based on direct observations and indirectly accessed pain experiences, but the two categories do not feature in a self-conscious discourse. On the basis of this broad examination, I suggested that the emergent attention for psychological phenomena is perhaps connected to a growing awareness in the late fifth and early fourth centuries that one could construct a ‘model’ of the mind. When exactly the psychological dimension emerges is not clear, but it is striking that the rise of models for mental processes (a theory of the mind or primitive ‘psychology’) by Plato has some historical claim to functioning as a concept of mental health, given the increase in labels for emotional states.85 While early Greek philosophers made many claims about perception and mind, it was Plato who first offered a model of the (tripartite) soul, which allowed for structured analysis of sensory, affective and cognitive experiences, when a person interacts with the world. That pain and pleasure now received an ethical reframing says a lot about the priorities of urban philosophers within the polis: they wanted to regulate behaviour, while physicians continued to observe patient behaviour. For both, the terminology was fundamental to perform these tasks.

Appendix A: Pain Terms in the Hippocratic Corpus

Coac. 137 Coac. 138 Coac. 309 Coac. 310 Coac. 311, 312, 316, 317 Coac. 314

ἐπώδυνος πόνος κεφαλῆς ἰσχυρός Πόνος ἀλγήματος ἄλγημα πόνος

(Bladder) will have pain Strong pain in the head Pain settling in the chest Migration of pain Pain Pain

Morb. i 26, 27, 28, 13 Morb. i 8

ὀδύνην ἄλγημα

Pain Pain

VM vi.3–4

ἀλγήματα

“fever and pain grow manifestly worse”

85

Kenny (1973), 1: “The concept of mental health was Plato’s invention”.

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VM vi.15 VM iii.17 VM xx.23–24

πόνου ἄπονοι πονηρόν

Pain Without pain Pain

Morb. iv 5 Morb. iv 24

ἀλγέει πόνον

Morb. iv 4

πόνον

Pain “when the phlegm has contracted and solidified, it will provide pain by striking the bladder” Pain

Int. 50

ἐν τῇ κοιλίῃ βάρος ἴσχει καὶ πόνος ἰσχυρός

“in the cavity there is heaviness and a violent ache”

Art. lxix.24

Pain (during amputation)

Art. xiv.28

ὀδυνηθῇ ὀδύνης ἅτε οὐκ ὀδυνώμενοι

VC xiv.10 Aër. ix.40

πόνῳ ὀδύνην

Pain Pain

Mul. i 3, 50, 60 Mul. i 51 Mul. i 3 Mul. i 61

ὀδύνη ἀλγέῃ πόνος ἀλγήσει

Pain Pain Pain “If the patient is touched in the region below her navel, she feels pain”

Off. xi.14

ἐν σχήματι ἀπόνῳ

“(bandage) in a position causing no pain”

Gland. 12

πονέει

Pain

Aph. iv.xi

Ὁκόσοισι στρόφοι, καὶ πόνοι περὶ τὸν ὀμφαλόν, καὶ ὀσφύος ἄλγημα μὴ λυόμενον μήτε ὑπὸ φαρμακείης, μήτ’ ἄλλως, εἰς ὕδρωπα ξηρὸν ἱδρύεται.

“Those who suffer from colic, pains about the navel, and ache in the loins, removed neither by purging nor in any other way, finish with a dry dropsy.”

Alim. xxvi Epid. 7 20

ὀδύνη ἀλγος

Ache Pain of feet, head

Pain (“feel no pain”)

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M. Pakaluk & G. Pearson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 47–74. Erginel, M. (2011) ‘Plato on the Psychology of Pleasure and Pain’, Phoenix, 65(3/4): 288– 314. Erginel, M. (2019) ‘Plato on Pleasures Mixed with Pains: An Asymmetrical Account’, OSAP 56: ch. 3 [DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198851059.003.0003]. Evans, M. (2007) ‘Plato and the Meaning of Pain’, Apeiron 40(1): 71–93. Fortenbaugh, W.W. & Sharples, R.W. & Sollenberger, M.G. (eds) (2003) Theophrastus of Eresus. On Sweat, On Dizziness, On Fatigue. Edition, translation, and commentary. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Frede, D. (1992) ‘Disintegration and Restoration: Pleasure and Pain in Plato’s Philebus’, in R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 425–463. Graver, M. (2001) ‘Managing mental pain: Epicurus vs Aristippus on the pre-rehearsal of future ills’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 17: 155–177. Graver, M. (2002) Cicero on the Emotions. Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Graver, M. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hadjistavropoulos, T. & Craig, K.D. (eds) (2004) Pain: Psychological Perspectives. London: Psychology Press. Harris, W.V. (2001) Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Harris, W. (ed.) (2018) Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 44). Leiden: Brill. Harris, W. (2018a) ‘Pain and Medicine in the Classical World’, in W. Harris (ed.), Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 44). Leiden: Brill, pp. 55–82 Holmes, B. (2007) ‘The Iliad’s economy of Pain’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 137(1): 45–84. Holmes, B. (2010) The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kenny, Anthony. (1973) ‘Mental Health in Plato’s Republic’, in A. Kenny (ed.), The Anatomy of the Soul: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1– 27. King, H. (1998) Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece. London: Routledge. Keyser, P. (2022) ‘Fossils, Fads, and Fancies in Pharmaceutical Handbooks: An Essay on Efficacy, Or Not’, in D. Konstan & D. Sider (Eds). Philodorema. Essays in Greek and Roman Philosophy in Honor of Phillip Mitsis. Parnassos Press, pp. 369–389.

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Klein, C. (2015) What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. Konstan, D. (2006) The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Laser, S. (1983) Medizin und Körperpflege: Archaeologia Homerica. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lateiner, D. (2002) ‘Pouring Bloody Drops (Iliad 16.459): The Grief of Zeus’, Colby Quarterly 38(1): 42–61. Letts, M. (2016) ‘Questioning the Patient, Questioning Hippocrates: Rufus of Ephesus and the Pursuit of Knowledge’, in G. Petridou & C. Thumiger (eds), Homo Patiens— Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 81–103. Linka, V. & Kaše, v. (2021) ‘Pain and Body in Corpus Hippocraticum: A Distributional Semantic Analysis’, Digital Classics Online 7: 54–71. Lloyd, G.E.R. (1983) Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lloyd, G.E.R. (2003) In the Grip of Disease. Studies in the Greek Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lorenz, R. (1976) Beiträge zur Hygiene bei Homer. Munich. Mackowiak, P.A. (2000). ‘Brief History of Antipyretic Therapy’, Clinical Infectious Diseases vol. 31, suppl. 5, pp. S154–S156. Majno, G. (1975) The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Mansfeld, J. (1999) ‘Sources’, in K.A. Algra, J. Barnes, J. Mansfeld & M. Schofield (eds), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–30. Mattern, S. (2016) ‘Galen’s Anxious Patients: Lupē as Anxiety Disorder’, in G. Petridou & C. Thumiger (eds), Homo Patiens—Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 203–223. Modrak, D. (2011) ‘Physicalism in Strato’s Psychology’, in Strato of Lampsacus: text, translation and discussion. R.W. Sharples (transl.), M.-L. Desclos & W.W. Fortenbaugh (eds). New Brunswick & London: Transaction Books, pp. 383–397. Moscoso, J. (2012) Pain: A Cultural History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Moseley, G.L. (2007) ‘Reconceptualising pain according to its underlying biology’, Physical Therapy Reviews 12: 169–178. Nutton, V. (2013) Ancient Medicine. London: Routledge. O’Reilly, K. (forthcoming) ‘Epicurus on Pain and the Recollection of Pleasure’. Papadakis, M. & Manios, A. (2020) ‘Couvade in the Ancient Greek Literature: Disease or Ritual Performance?’, Psychosomatics 61: 408–409. Peponi, A.-E. (2002) ‘Mixed pleasures, blended discourses: poetry, medicine, and the body in Plato’s Philebus 46–47c’, Classical Antiquity 21(1): 135–160.

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Perkins, J. (1995) The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge. Prost, F. (2004) Les théories hellénistiques de la douleur. Leuven: Peeters. Rapp, C. (2002) Aristoteles, Rhetorik. Übersetzung, Einleitung und Kommentar, 2 Bde. (= Aristoteles, Werke in deutscher Übersetzung, Bde. 4.1–4.2), Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Rey, R. (1995) The History of Pain. L.E. Wallace, J.A. Cadden & S.W. Cadden (transl.). Cambridge MA, London: Harvard University Press. Salazar, C.F. (2000) The Treatment of War Wounds in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. (Studies in Ancient Medicine 21). Leiden: Brill. Scarborough, J. (1995) ‘The opium poppy in Hellenistic and Roman medicine’, Drugs and Narcotics in History 4–23. Scullin, S.E. (2012) Hippocratic Pain. [Dissertation] Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Seth, A.K. (2013) ‘Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self’, Trends in cognitive sciences 17(11): 565–573. Tsouna, V. (1998) The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Villard, L. (2006) ‘Vocabulaire et représentation de la douleur dans la Collection hippocratique’, in F. Prost & J. Wilgaux (eds), Penser et représenter le corps dans l’Antiquité. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, pp. 61–78. Warren, J. (2007) ‘Democritus on Social and Psychological Harm’, in A. Brancacci & J. Morle (eds), Democritus: Science, the Arts, and the Care of the Soul. Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 87–104. Webster, C. (2016) ‘Voice Pathologies and the ‘Hippocratic Triangle’.’ In G. Petridou & C. Thumiger (eds) Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 166–199. White, S. (2021) Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. An Edited Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, N. (2013) ‘The Semantics of Pain in Greco-Roman Antiquity’, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 22(2): 129–143. Wolfsdorf, D. (2015) ‘Plato on Pain’, AntPhilos 9, 2015, 11–26.

chapter 3

Painful Drinks: Poison and Pain Experience in Nicander’s Alexipharmaca Daniel King

τὸν μέν τ’ ἢ λίπεος κορέοις ἢ ἀμισγέος οἴνης,/ ὄφρα κεν ἐξερύγῃσι κακὴν καὶ ἐπώδυνον ἄτην … You ought to give the victim either a drink of oil or unmixed wine, so that he vomits up the evil and painful atē.1

∵ 1

Introduction

When Nicander describes the remedy for the victim of hemlock poisoning— inducing vomiting to remove the noxious substance—he presents the poison itself in telling language. The use of ἐπώδυνον ἄτην underscores an intimate connection between poison and pain. The fact that drugs (pharmaca) that were either medically efficacious or harmful poisons could cause the individual pain was widely understood among ancient doctors.2 Here, however, Nicander goes further, linking such pain with the concept of atē. The connections between pain and poison are repeated throughout the Alexipharmaca: at times, patients “vomit up the poison, ridding themselves of the evil pain” (ἐξερύγῃσιν ἀλεξόμενος κακὸν ἄλγος, 459). At others, poisons are presented as inherently painful: in an example that recalls Hesiod’s description of Woe, Litharge is described as “hateful Litharge, bringer of pains” (Ἐχθραλέη … λιθάργυρος ἀλγινόεσσα, 594).3 Although Alex. is not centrally about pain per se, Nicander returns repeatedly

1 Nic. Alex. 195–196. The Greek text is taken from Jacques (2007), and translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 2 See Baltussen (this volume p. 3). On painful remedies, see, e.g.: Aret. SD. 3.1.1.2–2.7. 3 Hes. Theog. 214. Cf. also the reference to the “hateful, pain-inducing drink of Bupretis” (ἐπαλγύνουσα πόσις βουπρήστιδος ἐχθρῆς) at v. 335.

© Daniel King, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004677463_004

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to the painful, destructive impact of poison, describing in some detail the agony felt by the victims of different substances. In this chapter, I unpack this fascination in order to investigate the way the poet represents pain as a complex and multi-faceted experience, encompassing aspects of physical and psychological suffering. In the context of this volume, the Alex. provides fertile ground for exploring the representation of suffering in Hellenistic and later literature. The poem, along with the closely related Theriaca, was likely composed towards the end of the second century bc by the poet Nicander.4 The Alex. is embedded in the widespread practice of writing about poisoning (whether it be at the hands of wild beasts or with noxious substances): as well as reflecting a common literary interest, poisons and poisoning was a matter for continued experimentation and scientific investigation among Hellenistic communities and the Roman Empire.5 The text, moreover, sits at the intersection of didactic poetry and medico-scientific writing. Nicander himself was thought to be both a doctor and a poet; and he clearly draws on both medical literature and poetic material drawn from the traditions of Epic (Homer and Didactic), Tragedy, and Hellenistic poetry.6 Later doctors engaged closely with his work and were willing to quote him as an authority on poisons and other matters.7 The cultural positioning of the poem makes it ideal to investigate how pain is invested with different forms of social meaning.

4 Nicander’s identity, chronology, and his authorship of both these poems is much discussed: on chronology and identity, see Gow & Scholfield (1953), 7–8 (which is the view I have taken, here), Magnelli (2006) and Overduin (2015), 5–12. The practice of reading these two poems as a diptych is well established and justifiable, of course: Sistakou (2012), 195–196. My focus on the Alex. alone is done on the basis that there are some important differences in the treatment of pain between the two poems—the treatment of bodily wounds or mental alienation and madness—are two examples of such a divergence. 5 On the common practice of writing about poison: Hatzimichali (2009), 25–29. For the widespread interest in experimentation, see Galen on Attalus iii: Gal. Ant. 14.2K. For Nicander’s (possible) relationship with this King, see Fr. 104 and discussion by Gow & Scholfield (1953), 3–7. 6 The bibliography on this subject is extensive: see, inter alia, Jacques (2007), lxviii–lxxxii and Touwaide (1991); for his status as a doctor, see: Overduin (2015), 5–12 with further references. The entry in the Suda (s.v.: Νίκανδρος, Ξενοφάνους, Κολοφώνιος) lists him as a grammarian, a poet, and a doctor. For the connections with the Hippocratic Corpus, see Oikonomakos (1999). For his importance to the later medical tradition, see: Hatzimichali (2009), 25–29. For the broader connection between scientific writing and poetry, see Overduin (2009) and Papadopoulou (2009). 7 See, e.g.: Gal. PHP. ii.8.10 De Lacy (= 5.275K) (quoting Alex. 21–22); SMT 12.289.13K (for paraphrases of “Nicander, the poet”); Ther.Pis. 14.265K (quoting Ther. 231–232).

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The Alex. purports to teach the reader how to recognise different poisons and what cures to apply to the victim to return them to health. As such, a considerable portion of this poem is dedicated to describing, in detail, the deleterious effects of various toxins on the individual. Students of Nicander have been very interested in the various ways in which he catalogues the symptoms of poisoning, including but not limited to physical perceptions of pain. JeanMarie Jacques provides an extensive list of the physical and mental effects of different poisons.8 Evina Sistakou and Floris Overduin, in their respective expansive studies of the poet, have attended to Nicander’s aesthetic concerns in representing the agonised body. For Sistakou, in particular, the focus on the poisoned body is indicative of a sensory poetics which attempts to capitalise on the aesthetic potential of the wounded body.9 Overduin, in a related vein, has focussed on the way the representation of the wounds in the Ther. might be seen in terms of the reader’s attraction to, and aesthetic pleasure in viewing, that which is disgusting.10 Part of what I want to suggest is that the Alex. and its treatment of pain might be seen in slightly different terms. Over the last three decades, a number of studies have emphasised that pain is not just a biologically determined physical perception (nociception), but also a phenomenon shaped by cultural, social, and psychological factors.11 The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as follows: “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience” that resembles or is associated with actual or potential tissue damage. In explaining their approach, the Association points out that pain also has consequences for the individual’s psychological health and social well-being.12 Building on these approaches, David Morris argues that pain is an experience which confounds easy boundaries between body and mind, combining physical perception and mental or psychological state. For Morris, the experience contains complex cultural meanings, 8 9

10 11 12

Jacques (2007), xxxii–xxxiv, and see xxxiv–xxxvii for discussion of anatomical terminology. Sistakou (2012), 250 for reference to aesthetic potential; for her analysis of the body’s presentation in terms of clinical realism, pathos, and abjection and their connection with the aesthetic potential of the wounded body, see: 234–250. Cf. Toohey (1996), 62–73 for further discussion of the macabre and voyeuristic in Nicander’s poetry. Overduin (2016), 143: “… display of disgust is in fact part of Nicander’s aesthetic program of sensationalism”. King (forthcoming). For the IASP definition and the adverse effects on social and psychological well-being: https://www.iasp‑pain.org/resources/terminology/#pain. Accessed: 10/05/23. (See Introduction [this volume].) For engagement with the IASP definition see Morris (1991), 15–18, but note that Morris uses an older IASP definition at, e.g., 16; or Scarry (2007), 284 (with her n.3 for further references).

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and has consequences for the individual’s social and personal identity.13 In this context, the methods used to describe or communicate suffering in Nicander’s Alex. take on an added importance, helping to communicate the perception more precisely and to frame the significance and meaning of pain. Approaching Nicander through this framework will thus facilitate a more holistic perspective. Over the course of this paper, I investigate this perspective through a consideration of Nicander’s specific pain terminology, his treatment of victims’ physical integrity and, finally, the psychological experiences he links to the physical. By approaching Nicander’s descriptions of poison victims through this lens, I hope to underscore the richness of the vocabulary that Nicander applies to pain experience. In contra-distinction to some of the other discussions of this volume, there is a marked absence of subjective, personalised accounts of victims’ own pain. This said, however, in representing the body in pain, Nicander draws on common ways of understanding and expressing pain: his idiom, metaphors, and descriptive similes often reflect ways of describing pain experiences in different genres or different cultural contexts, such as medical diagnosis or myth. Given Nicander’s well-known (and well-discussed) combination of scientific and medical material and didactic epic poetry, this interplay is hardly surprising.14 What is, perhaps, more telling is the way in which different frameworks for understanding suffering combine productively to develop a complex picture: Nicander uses these various ways of describing the pained body to show what it means to suffer and to explore the impact of suffering on the individual and their sense of self.

2

Describing Pain: From Symptoms to Difficulties

A central aspect of Nicander’s interest in recognising different poisons includes documenting the felt sensations that are specific to each toxin. Pain is far from the only symptom felt by victims, but it is a constant one: explicit words for pain, such as algos, odunē, and ania, appear over 15 times throughout the poem’s 632 verses.15 In addition to these usages, Nicander describes painful

13 14 15

See e.g. Morris (1991), 9–30 (esp. 9–12 on the “Myth of Two Pains”) and 152–173. For refs. see above, n.6. ἄλγος: 35, 81, 121, 125, 196, 213, 335 (ἐπαλγύνουσα), 431, 459, 594 (ἀλγινόεσσα); ὀδύνη: 598 (ὀδύνῃσιν) 196 (ἐπώδυνον); ἀνία: 122. For specific references to poisons as painful: 196, 335, 504. I discuss most of these references below. For the last three terms: μόχθος: 398; πημαίνω: 510; ἀσχαλάω: 124.

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sensations, combining specific pain terminology or medical vocabulary with descriptions of explicitly painful conditions such as kardialgia (heartburn) as well as broader descriptions of pain (e.g. askhalaō, akhos and mokthon). One example of Nicander’s approach can be seen in his treatment of the “pain-inducing drink of Bupretis” (ἐπαλγύνουσα πόσις βουπρήστιδος, 335), which induces the following: “and about the mouth of the stomach, shifting pains arise” (ἀμφὶ δὲ γαστρός ἄλγεα δινεύοντα περὶ στομάτεσσιν ὄρωρεν, 338–339). The notion of pains that move about the body or extend through different parts of the body is quite familiar within medical contexts.16 The specific movement of pain (or lack thereof) helps doctors track what they perceive to be the affected internal locations inside the body or a patient’s specific condition. To the best of my knowledge, however, Nicander’s choice of term δινεύω to describe a sensory perception such as this is unique. The term is regularly associated with circular movement and motion17 and the associated visual image of eddying or swirling phenomena suggests that the perception of pain revolves around this area of the body, rather than darting from one location within the body to another or remaining fixed in one location. The choice of adjective might reflect Nicander’s (typically Hellenistic) desire for neologism and unusual linguistic forms. It also, arguably, attempts to offer a precise definition either of what ancient doctors thought their patients felt or, arguably, what patients described themselves. A more common metaphor which Nicander employs is the ‘biting pain’. In the case of poison made from Blister-Beetle there is sometimes a “biting” or “smarting” sensation (δηχμόν, 119) on the lips, and the patient is “bitten by pains” (ἐπιδάκνεται ἄλγεϊ, 121; cf. 19) at the mouth of the stomach. The notion of the bite is one of the more common metaphors for the sensation of pain throughout Greek medical and philosophical literature, accounting for both experiences of mental distress as well as physical pain.18 The Hippocratic Epidemics, in particular, document such pains occurring throughout the body: “the eyes smart” (Aphorisms 3.17.4; Epid. 4.1.35), and smarting pains can occur in locations such as the hand in those afflicted by fever (Epid. 6.1.14). As well

16

17 18

See, for example, διαΐσσω / διᾴσσω at Hp. Mul. ii. 24, Morb. i 22.50; with similar usages at Gal. Loc. Aff. 8.93, 94, 110K; Aret. CA. 6.6.5.3, SA. 2.8.1.2; CD. 8.4.8.3. For pain types as a diagnostic sign in Gal. Loc. Aff., see: Gärtner (2015), 670–673, esp. 672 for a comprehensive list. On pain terms, generally, see also Baltussen (this volume) and Lewis (this volume). LSJ. s.v. δινεύω. Mental or emotional pain: on Chrysippus’ interest in emotional suffering and “bites”, see Sorabji (2002), 39–40; Gal. PHP ii.8.4–20 De Lacy (= 5.273–277K). For a discussion of bites in grief, see King (2015), 257–259, with further references.

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as occurring throughout the body, biting pain is often presented as a symptom consistently associated with sharp, bilious, or acrid substances. At Epid. 1.2.4.23, bilious diarrhoea comes with “smarting/biting pains” (daknōdesin) as does urine (daknōdea at 1.3.13(2).26) and acrid flux (reuma drimu) (for example at 1.3.13(5).31; 1.3.13(14).5). The use of this term throughout the Epid. suggests that the notion of biting or smarting pain constitutes a kind of ‘pain type’, a specific and consistent symptom which can arise in certain conditions, and aids diagnosis by the doctor. This metaphor remains a consistent one for describing pain symptoms in later medical writing. Galen’s On the Difference of Symptoms holds that it arises in instances where the retentive capacity of the stomach has failed;19 for Galen, the perception was particularly associated with the prevalence and qualities of certain substances within the body—foods, for example, that were bilious, astringent, and sharp as well as humours that had become biting in themselves.20 The consistency and commonality with which “biting” or “smarting” was used to describe pain symptoms across ancient medical (and other) literature is important. At one level, it reflects Nicander’s (well-known) connection with medical discourse. The metaphor of the bite or biting pain raises important questions about the relationship between subjective and objective views of pain symptoms in medical and diagnostic contexts. On the one hand, this term reflects an objective, medicalised view of the body and its perceptions. At the same time, it reflects doctors’ needs to discuss pain symptoms with patients in order to ascertain precisely what it is that patients perceive and where in the body they perceive it. The language of ‘biting pain’ sits at the vague, fuzzy line between scientific objective knowledge and terminology and subjective, personal language and experience. Nicander’s choice of this term is telling, moreover, in a didactic context in which he teaches his addressee to recognize (that is diagnose) particular poisons: here he chooses a metaphor that crosses the boundary between what patients perceive or feel, what readers will understand from their own experiences, and what the addressee is able to deduce or recognise in the patient. One condition with which such bites were commonly associated was heartburn (kardialgia). Nicander refers to this condition a number of times throughout his poem, and explicitly by name in the discussion of Aconite.21 Here the

19 20 21

Gal. Diff. Symp. 7.68K. Cf. Johnston (2006), 53. Gal. Diff. Symp. 7.235K. Nic. Alex. 581. Bites and distress in the mouth / opening of the stomach are also common, but not always from heartburn: cf. vv. 121 (bites) and 122 (ania in the chest), and the slightly different example at v. 509 (the irritation caused by leeches).

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“bilious draught” (χολόεν ποτόν) that the victim consumes affects “his chest with an evil crushing and induces heartburn” (εἰλύεται στέρνοισι κακῇ ἀλάλυγγι βαρῦνον/ φῶτ’ ἐπικαρδιόωντα, 18–19) and the top of the stomach is bitten (ἐπιδάκνεται ἄκρον/ νειαίρης, 19–20). The description of heartburn emphasises the metaphor of the ‘biting pain’ at the top of the stomach. There can be little doubt that Nicander is describing a specific medical condition. Indeed, as Konstantinos Oikonomakos has pointed out, this terminology may very well mirror the technical language of On the Diseases of Women22 and kardialgia is reported repeatedly throughout the Epid. and other Hippocratic writings.23 At multiple places in his corpus, Galen defines the condition as “bites” or “irritation” at the mouth of the stomach: in the On the Alimentary Faculty, Galen, quoting the second book of the Epid., states that doctors refer to the top of the stomach as the heart and that it is bitten or distressed by mordant humours.24 Galen’s definition, importantly, reflects a long tradition of medical writing that is interested in explaining the condition in terms of irritation, and generally bites, at the mouth of the stomach. Other metaphors used throughout the poem point to a more nebulous approach to pain, which moves beyond a strict focus on the physical perceptions or symptoms. Nicander also uses akthomai to indicate different sensations or physical difficulty. In the case of Thorn-Apple, the poet describes how the victim is affected: he is struck initially by hiccups which force the neck back, and then, “since he is distressed at the mouth of the stomach” (… ὁ δ’ ἀχθόμενος στόμα γαστρός, 379) the victim vomits bloody food or evacuates the bowels like one suffering from dysentery (… ὡς εἴ τε δυσέντερος ἀχθόμενος φώς, 382). Here akthomai combines specific painful symptoms with a general physical difficulty associated with the condition of dysentery. A more telling example can be found in the discussion of Toxicon, which Nicander introduces in dramatic style: “you would immediately ward off the burden (ἄχθος) from pestilential or deadly Toxicon (λοιγήεντι τοξικῷ) when a man is weighed down by pains” (or “distress”) (ἀχέεσσι βαρύνηται, 207–208). Indeed, as Nicander continues, a range of violent physical conditions develop for those unfortunate enough to drink the poison: their gums burst open with pustules and they vomit; these are eventually accompanied by mental alien-

22 23

24

Hp. Mul. i 2 (8.18.17), ii 68 (8.360.5). For a discussion of v. 19 and the comparison with Mul., along with other uses of Hippocratic terminology see: Oikonomakos (1999), 244. The list is too extensive to record here. See, e.g.: Acut. 1.8, 5.3 (for the association with algos in the stomach) 14.5 (for being bitten “by pain”); Mul. i 43 (for bites in the stomach). Gal. Alim. Fac. 6.604K and, e.g. Gal. UP. 1.271 Helmreich.

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ation (which I will return to below). As a response, the victims “shout out in their distress” (ἀχθόμενος βοάᾳ, 215).25 The shout, in particular, speaks loudly to the way in which this experience impacts on the individual. Pain is such here that it compels the victim to scream. Furthermore, it is hard not to see the terms in this instance (akhthos, akhos, and akhthomai) covering a broader sense of pain—this is not a ‘pain type’ in the terms we discussed above—in which feelings of intense physical pain are combined with emotional and psychological elements. Akhos, in particular, looks to the Homeric epics, especially the anguish felt by heroes in the Iliad, and to the suffering of individuals within Tragedy. (This is reinforced in the closing lines of the discussion, when Nicander describes individuals who, “having endured countless sufferings” [μυρί’ ἐπιτλάς, 241], only just manage to recover their health.) This language frames the victims against the heroic and mythic world; they become, on this reading, people whose experiences can be understood against heroic endurers, weighed down by difficult experiences, reframing the experience of pain and poison as one involving physical and psychological anguish. Put another way, akthomai helps to map out a kind of vision of the experience of poisoning, and what the victim is going through in physical and emotional terms.

3

Undermining Physical Integrity and ‘Pain Experience’

Nicander has, then, a wide variety of specific and general terminology to describe victims’ pain. This interest in the symptomology of poison underpins a focus on the ways in which poison affects the physical body. As we have seen above, questions of physical integrity lie at the heart of pain experience: recall that the IASP’s definition of pain emphasised the importance of (real or perceived) tissue damage.26 In what follows, I turn to two central themes related to the exploration of physical integrity in this poem—the notion of wounding and corporeal fragmentation. The treatment of these aspects of physical experience serve, to some extent, various aesthetic purposes, such as enhancing the pathos of a particular scene or condition.27 They also, however, connect the experience of poisoning with painful and illness experiences from other contexts. Indeed,

25 26 27

On shouting to indicate pain in the case of Ovid’s Marsyas, see Clarke (this volume, p. 211– 212). See above, n.12, for further discussion. For discussion, see: Jackson (2000) and Scarry (2007), 284, with further references; see also Clarke (this volume, p. 205n3 & 211–212). E.g. Alex. 465–482: the case of the Sea-Hare, where the description of the effects of the bite of the animal comes closest to those tableaux described by Overduin (2016).

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by underscoring a victim’s fragmentary physical state, Nicander locates their experience within one common cultural framework for understanding suffering. 3.1 Wounding Wounds, wounding, and trauma offer a pervasive and consistent metaphor for pain and suffering. For Elaine Scarry, the wound functions associatively to communicate victims’ personal and internal experiences of pain and suffering to others around them.28 The visibility of the physical rupture allows others to imagine and understand one’s pain and helps individuals conceptualise their own suffering. Of course, different societies see the wound and its association with pain in different terms. The Hippocratic writers appear to have largely downplayed the role that tissue damage or wounds played in pain (emphasising rather internal material changes in the body).29 Galen saw the destruction of the body’s continuity (conceived in a number of ways, including physical and tissue continuity) and trauma as one central cause of pain.30 Outside medical contexts, wounds were certainly metonymic of pain: Philoctetes’ suppurating wound in Sophocles’ Philoctetes, for example.31 In other contexts, the wound points to the pain and traumatic experience of physical destruction, and the erotic or aesthetically pleasing aspects of the visible wound, especially in the context of heroic or youthful death.32 The first example from the Alex. to which I (re)turn, quite briefly, is the discussion of Toxicon. Victims of this poison suffer a series of destructive symptoms: the lips and tongue swell, victims have dry expectorate, and their gums “break out in pustules” (… ἐκρήγνυται οὖλα, 211). In the closing stages of this discussion, Nicander elaborates further on the type of poison he is discussing: 28 29 30

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Scarry (1985), 15–16 for the way wounds, and weapons function associatively to communicate pain; Scarry (2007), for her analysis of wounds. Scullin (2012), 18–20. Gal. Loc. Aff. 8.80K: pain has two causes, “one [provoked] by an overwhelming change of the [humoural] mixture, and [the other] by the loss of continuity.... each part which has been stretched, compressed, bruised or wounded becomes painful because of the continuity [of the tissue] has been disturbed. When someone has been injured by an arrow, he does not suffer in a different manner than if he had been affected by an acrid humour which is corrosive. In both … the continuity … is being destroyed.” Translation: Siegel (1976). Soph. Ph. 6–7; Of course, Philoctetes’ sore is one of the most enduring literary and cultural symbols of the painful wound: Schein (2013), 8–10 with Bowersock (1994), 62–64 on its importance in antiquity; Weissberg (1989) and Budelmann (2007) on the reception of Philoctetes’ and Sophocles’ pain in general. E.g. inter alia King (2018), 161–215 in relation to Imperial Greek literature.

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τῷ μὲν Γερραῖοι νομάδες χαλκήρεας αἰχμάς/ οἵ τε παρ’ Εὐφρήταο ῥόον πολέοντες ἀρούρας/ χραίνουσιν· τὰ δὲ πολλὸν ἀναλθέα τραύματα τεύχει/ σάρκα μελαινομένην· πικρὸς δ’ ὑποβόσκεται Ὕδρης/ ἰός, σηπόμενον δὲ μύδῳ ἐκρήγνυται ἔρφος. This is the poison with which the Gerrhan nomads and those who plough their fields by the river Euphrates smear their brazen arrow-heads. And the wounds, which are very much beyond assistance, blacken the flesh, for the stinging poison of the Hydra eats its way in, while the skin, turning putrid with the infection, breaks into open sores.33 These final lines conclude the entire catalogue entry on Toxicon, clarify exactly what substance Nicander has been discussing, and, in retrospect, invite readers to compare the two experiences of drinking and being shot with the poison. (Note, for instance, the verbal repetition of ἐκρήγνυται.) On one reading, the reference to the barbarous tribe of Arabian nomads and the description of the wound beginning to deteriorate as the poison of the Hydra eats into the flesh is deeply emotive: poison associated with the exotic other and the spectre of the hydra monster both underscoring the pathos of the scene.34 Also important here are the references to poison eating into the body and wounds breaking open, which help to animate the poison, giving it a kind of macabre agency over the body, as well as recalling the actions of poisonous animals and the food they consume.35 At the same time, the intimations of breaking the surface of the skin suggests further physical destruction of the body’s integrity and the break-down of clear barriers between internal body and the external world. Some of the themes that appear in the case of Toxicon recur in a more direct example of physical destruction in the description of Meadow-Saffron. If someone drinks the poison, Nicander claims, there are a range of adverse affects: a heaviness settles in the stomach, and it “eats into it” (ἐρεπτόμενον): … μετέπειτα δὲ λοιγεϊ συρμῷ/ ῥιζόθεν ἑλκωθέντα, κακὸν δ’ ἀποήρυγε δειρῆς,/ ὡς εἴ τε κρεάων θολερὸν πλύμα χεύατο δαιτρός,/ σὺν δέ τε καὶ νηδὺς μεμιασμένα λύματα βάλλει.

33 34 35

Nic. Alex. 244–248. Translation modified from Gow & Scholfield. Sistakou (2012) for this reading. For some excellent comparanda in the Ther. and for a discussion of their relationship to disgust and the sublime, see Overduin (2016). Cf. περιβόσκεται to describe the feeding of the turtle at 391. The metaphor recurs throughout the Ther.

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… and after that, as he is lacerated from below by the deadly effluxions, he vomits up the evil from his neck, as if a butcher was pouring off the foul scum of meat, and at the same time the stomach throws out the polluted detritus.36 It is hard not to read this description in terms of the heavy language that describes the experience of wounding we saw above. The implications of the physical destruction in this scene continue as Nicander describes the way in which the body removes the detritus created by the venom’s corrosive effects. The simile—that of the butcher who is cleaning meat—reiterates that the body is transformed into something to be eaten, no more than flesh or a carcass. If the dehumanising implications of this transformation were not strong enough already, they are immediately reinforced by the use of μεμιασμένα λύματα (“polluted scum”). Lumata (meaning refuse, but also defilement and filth) and miainō hammer home the point about the defilement and polluting qualities of the wounded body. Elaine Scarry suggests that acts of physical torture are particularly powerful because they transform the individual who is tortured into little more than a wound to which we (as onlookers) have an immediate aversion. For Scarry, the disgust felt at the obscenity of the wound eclipses the sense that there might be a suffering person or individual in front of us.37 Although, as Overduin argues, there are times when Nicander makes aesthetic mileage out of the disgusting qualities of the body’s wounds, this scene does not seem to facilitate the viewers’ interest in this way.38 Indeed, it seems to reflect a situation in which wounding and destruction of the body’s integrity is such that it provokes a visceral reaction in onlookers; in so doing, Nicander ascribes to the wound, the body, and the victim a particular social identity and status. 3.2 Fragmentation The second major theme in the treatment of physical integrity that I wish to examine concerns the representation of the body itself. One of the curious features of the Alex. is an apparent lack of interest in describing or referring to the body as a whole. Nicander continually hones in, rather, on specific local

36 37 38

Nic. Alex. 256–259. Scarry (2007), esp. 285–286. For further discussion of exactly this issue, see Clarke and Lawrence (this volume). Cf. the scenes described in Overduin (2016): 149–150 (The Blood-Letter; Ther. 298–308); 150–151 (The Grape and Blue Spider; Ther. 719–733); 152–153 (Dipsas; Ther. 334–342). Cf. the Sea-Hare at Alex. 465–482.

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parts of the body that are overcome or affected by poison in some way. This fragmentation is a fundamental part of his narration of the experience of pain and underpins the ruinous impact of poison on the victim’s sense of identity and self-hood. It is perhaps not surprising that Nicander’s focus on the body is drawn ineluctably to the parts of the body that come immediately into contact with the poison. The way poison tastes or feels on the lips, gums, and stomach recur throughout the Alex. When treating the “drink of white lead”, Nicander stresses that the astringent froth gets into the gums, and the furrows of the tongue swell, the tongue becomes rough, and the throat dries out.39 At other times, he discusses the sensation of intense pains caused by the poison in other areas of the body. In the case of the Blister-Beetle, Nicander traces the movement of pain down the digestive path: there is a “smarting pain on the lips” and “then deeper down at the mouth of the stomach” (τεύχουσιν, τοτὲ δ’ αὖτε περὶ στόμα νείατα γαστρός, 120). At other occasions, the “middle of the stomach is bitten with pain” (μεσάτη ἐπιδάκνεται ἄλγεϊ/ νηδύς, 121), or the bladder or there is “distress in the thorax” (περιψαύουσι δ’ ἀνῖαι/ θώρηκος, τόθι χόνδρος ὑπὲρ κύτος ἕζετο γαστρός, 122–123). This focus on the elements of the mouth and the digestive tract allows readers to visualise the course of the ingested poison through body. Sistakou rightly points out that there is a kind of anatomical mood invoked in some of these descriptions: Nicander’s tableaux create a sense of interiority allowing the reader ‘to see’ through this ekphrastic, vivid narration certain internal parts of the body and poison’s destruction of them.40 At other times, the process of describing the symptoms is less interiorizing, as in the case of Aconite. Here the poison constricts the drinker’s jaws, the roof of the mouth, and his gums; it crushes the chest; the top of the belly is gripped with pain, the “gate” to the intestines is closed (vv. 16–23). These symptoms are coupled immediately with further problems: his eyes drip with sweat, his belly is shaken with wind, there is a hateful weight in his head, and shaking, and his eyes see double (vv. 24–28). In other instances, victims’ extremities are chilled (ἄκρα … ψύχει, 192) and the veins in their limbs are contracted (περὶ … φλέβες ἔνδοθι γυίων, 192). Or, their skin becomes taught on their limbs (γυίοις τετανὸν

39 40

Nic. Alex. 74–82. Sistakou (2012), 240, in reference to the description of Aconite: “… whereas the external manifestations of poisoning, such as wounds, are visible to the naked eye, the affection of the internal organs presuppose the performance of anatomy on a corpse …. Nicander evokes the mood of an anatomy lesson and the setting of a dissecting table here, once the reader/spectator gains access to the inside of the human body”.

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περιφαίνεται ἔρφος, 340) or their limbs become jaundiced (χλόος, 474) and their skin melts away or the flesh around the ankles becomes swollen (σάρκες δὲ περισταλάδην μινύθουσι/ τηκόμεναι, 475–476). These various scenes are interesting, in my mind, as much for what is not mentioned as what is included. For all their cataloguing of symptoms across the body, the descriptions eschew any sense of the body as a whole. In contrast to the Ther. where it is used thirteen times, demas appears only twice in the Alex. (once to refer to the body being either chilled, or moistened by sweat).41 Just as the poem repeatedly rehearses the physically destructive effects of poison, it also represents that destruction by simply eschewing the sense of the whole body, the complete form of those who have been affected. How might we read this way of representing the body? Fragmentation is, perhaps, an enduring metaphor for illness experience and can be documented across widely diverse contexts (ancient and modern).42 Jessica Hughes, in her excellent study of anatomical votives, argues that fragmentation is a common metaphor for the experience of being ill. Hughes points to a range of fifth and fourth-century (and later) textual and visual representations—from Thucydides’ account of the plague in Athens, to anatomical votive offerings—which depict illnesses by fragmenting the body into parts that display or experience various symptoms. On this reading, the Hippocratic Epid, through their pairedback lists of symptoms and body parts for each individual illness case, ensure that the sufferers’ bodies are figuratively dismembered and redistributed through the written text. This narrative technique may be seen to reflect the passivity of the patient in the hands of the physician, mirroring in words the physical breakdown of the ill body and the sensation of fractured identity.43 It is hard not to see Nicander’s work tapping into some of these themes, especially through its connection with the Epid. It is, perhaps, worthwhile recalling the didactic and diagnostic objective of the poem. The Alex. presents the body 41 42

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Nic. Alex. 85 (cooling) and 112 (moistened with sweat). It is mentioned 13 times in the Ther.: 161, 204, 244, 247, 254, 294, 320, 322, 328, 370, 397, 403, 476. For modern discussions of the metaphor, see Kleinman (1988); for ancient discussions Hughes (2017), esp. 25–61; cf. Petridou (2018) on Lucian and fragmentation in Imperial literature. Hughes (2017), 48–55, especially 50 (for the quotation). For the comparison, along with Thucydides’ account of the Athenian Plague, to the poetic genre of blason anatomique, see 49–50.

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to the reader’s eyes with a view to teaching them what is significant in order that they recognise a particular condition or poison. In this context, what Nicander chooses to describe is not the whole, integrated body of the suffering individual. The victim, the suffering agonised individual and their body, is reduced to a wound, a fragment. The text dismembers the body, rearranges it according to its symptoms or the way it is damaged by the noxious toxin. In representing the destructive, wounding and fragmenting effects of poison in this way, Nicander locates the victims squarely within a familiar cultural paradigm which helps shape how different communities understand, and how sick individuals navigate, their suffering. 3.3 Pain, Mental Alienation, and Madness In this final section, I turn to the discussion of the psychological experiences of poisoning. Jacques has shown that mental derangement is an important symptom that Nicander describes when discussing the victim’s poisoning.44 These range from visual and mental delusion to experiences where the individuals “mind” (noēma) has been overcome (damazō) or shocked (ekplēxis) through to powerful and evocative descriptions of mental alienation.45 These mental experiences are conceptualised in terms of physical damage, either real, imagined, or metaphorical. In other words, by reiterating the theme of the wound and physical damage they are intimately linked with the ideas about pain that I outlined above. Secondly, these experiences of mental derangement and pain underpin a loss of self or identity. Let us begin with the recurring motif of atē, which is a constant presence throughout the poem. Atē is a notoriously hard term to pin down and its meaning in the context of both Epic and Tragedy has been the subject of considerable scholarly discussion.46 Nicander uses it in a number of ways: at times, it refers directly to the poison ingested by the victim, as in the example quoted at the beginning of this chapter, and emphasises the physical impact of the substance: “under the influence of the destructive atē”, victims “cough up dry expectorate” (ξηρὰ δ’ … ὀλοῇ χελλύσσεται ἄτῃ, 81). On other occasions, victims are “overcome unexpectedly by afflictions” (ὁ δ’ ἀελπέα δάμναται ἄταις, 125). Nicander also describes victims’ mental states through reference to atē. The minds of some are “tripped up” and “shocked” by the “evil atē” (κακῇ ἐσφαλμένον ἄτῃ,

44 45 46

Jacques (2007), xxxii–xxxiv. Nic. Alex. 29, 35 (visual impairment and delusion); 543 (mind “blunted”). For other examples, see discussion below. The literature is extensive; I give only a brief outline of significant discussions for my thinking: Padel (1995), Dodds (1951), Saïd (2009).

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213), while others are “deluded” when they experience it (for example at 36). Atē, then, helps chart the different aspects of poisoning with which Nicander is concerned; it links the powerful and painful actions of the noxious substance, its effects on the individual, and the psychological and mental deterioration of the unfortunate victim. The role of atē is writ large in the discussion of poisoning by the BlisterBeetle. We have already discussed this poison in relation to its physical impact and the perception of the bite that the victims feel upon drinking it, but it also has a number of broader effects: Αὐτοὶ δ’ ἀσχαλόωσιν, ἄλη δέ φιν ἤθεα φωτός/ ἄψυχος πεδάει· ὁ δ’ ἀελπέα δάμναται ἄταις,/ οἷά τε δὴ γήρεια νέον τεθρυμμένα κάκτου/ ἠέρ’ ἐπιπλάζοντα διαψαίρουσι πνοῇσι. They [the victims] are themselves distressed, and a soulless wandering holds in bondage their human character,/ they are overcome unexpectedly by afflictions,/ as newly dispersed thistledown/ roams through the air and is scattered on the breeze.47 There is clearly a sense of indeterminacy between the kinds of experience being described here. Physical distress in the previous lines shifts quickly to the anguish or distress indicated by the use of askhallaō; similarly, the use of atē here could suggest either physical pain or a more general sense of affliction. The mental experience itself, tellingly, is presented as a psychical wandering and dispersal. Wandering is a common metaphor for the mental derangement that accompanies either other illnesses or occurs on its own.48 It is, however, perhaps more common from tragic contexts, in which wandering appears to be a symptom, par excellence, of mental alienation and loss of self.49 There are two further points to note alienation here. The suggestion that victims wander (note the emphasis on “soulless wandering …”) and that this wandering restrains their human qualities (literally: “… holds in bondage their human character”) eloquently points to victims’ loss of self and ‘humanity’. The second concerns the simile used to visualise the experience. If wandering suggests a sense of dislocation and being out of one’s rational mind, the simile that the

47 48 49

Nic. Alex. 124–127. Translation modified from Gow & Scholfield. For “pain” see Gow & Scholfield’s translation (1953). I have opted, generally, for “affliction”. Thumiger (2009), 79, citing Hp. Epid. iv 5.156.20. E.g. Eur. Med. 1285; cf. Saïd’s discussion of wandering of Io and Prometheus: Saïd (2009), 377–381.

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description closes with—that is, being blown like thistledown on the breeze— adds to this, providing a sense of physical and mental fragmentation and dislocation. The connection between wandering, fragmentation, and loss of self is rehearsed throughout the poem. It is associated, as we shall see, either with behaviour directly attributed to victims or presented through descriptive similes. A second, perhaps more specific, connection with tragedy concerns the victim of Coriander poisoning. Those who have drunk this poison are “struck out of their wits” (οἱ μέν τ’ ἀφροσύνῃ ἐμπληγέες, 158), and they “babble like madmen” (μάργοι/ δήμια λαβράζουσι, 158–159). As the tableau continues, the behaviour of these individuals is like that of Bacchae: “and like the Bacchae who shout shrill songs owing to their mind which has been struck with the unflinching gadfly” (παραπλῆγές θ’ ἅτε Βάκχαι/ ὀξὺ μέλος βοόωσιν ἀταρμύκτῳ φρενὸς οἴστρῳ, 160–161). This scene does not map exactly onto the previous example of the Blister-Beetle: the reference to aphrosynē perhaps just suggesting a sense of being separated from your wits or being without your mind.50 Perhaps the first thing to note about this scene is the repeated metaphors of pain and wounding. The use of emplēgees and paraplēges to describe how victims are struck mad is a case in point. The metaphor is habitually used to describe mental experiences, but it is hard to see past its connection with real blows—it conceives mental experience in terms of physical injury, attack, and damage. Of course, the sense of damage is reiterated in the use of oistros to describe the mental condition of the Bacchae. The line is possibly an allusion to Euripides’Bacchae 665 in which the followers of Dionysus are described fleeing Thebes after they are “stung by the goad”51 and performing monstrous acts on Mt. Kitharon. It is also reminiscent of other tragic figures, such as Io, who are driven by the sting of the gadfly.52 In this context, oistros reiterates the connection between mental and physical forms of pain and wounding. The intimations of the loss of the indi50 51

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LSJ. s.v. ἀφροσύνη. Eur. Ba. 664–667: Αγ. βάκχας ποτνιάδας εἰσιδών, αἳ τῆσδε γῆς/ οἴστροισι λευκὸν κῶλον ἐξηκόντισαν,/ ἥκω φράσαι σοι καὶ πόλει χρήιζων, ἄναξ,/ ὡς δεινὰ δρῶσι θαυμάτων τε κρείσσονα. (“Messenger: Since I watched the holy Bacchae, who, stung by the goad, fled from this land with their white limbs, I have come needing to report to you and the city, lord, that they are performing terrible things which are beyond astounding.”). cf. Eur. Ba. 979 and 1229. The gadfly is a constant metaphor in the presentation of Io’s madness and wanderings throughout Aesch. PV. See especially references at: 566 (“the gadfly … wounds”; χρίει … οἶστρος), 580, 589, 681 (“I am struck by the gadfly”; οἰστροπλὴξ δ’ ἐγὼ), 879–880 (“the point of the gadfly wounds …”; οἴστρου δ’ ἄρδις/ χρίει …). Madness and pain are also connected at Eur. HF. 862, where Lyssa compares her attack of Hercules to “the lightning bolt’s sting which brings pain” (κεραυνοῦ τ’ οἶστρος ὠδῖνας πνέων).

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vidual’s identity or self are also readily apparent throughout this passage. Quite apart from the reference to the Bacchae, the suggestion that they “babble” like “madmen” stresses the loss of a central human quality. If speech is one way in which we might define the rational and thinking individual, its loss in this context implies a loss of the qualities that make the victim both human and a social being.53 The implications of speech loss are reiterated in another example of mental alienation and derangement, this time under the influence of Toxicon. In addition to the physical symptoms discussed above, the poison also has a powerful psychological impact: “it is their fate that their whole mind is struck and tripped up by evil affliction” (πᾶν δὲ νόημα ἔμπληκτον μεμόρηκε κακῇ ἐσφαλμένον ἄτῃ, 212–213), repeating some of the motifs of the destructive role of atē and the metaphor of the wound. There are a range of further dehumanising effects, centred around fragmentation and the destruction of the human voice. The victim “bleats, babbling endlessly in his mania” (… ὁ μηκάζει μανίης ὕπο μυρία φλύζων). The loss of speech—and its implications for a loss of human identity and self—is suggested by Nicander’s choice of the onomatopoeia mēkazō, which is commonly used of sheep. These animalistic elements are strengthened by still more macabre imagery: δηθάκι δ’ ἀχθόμενος βοάᾳ ἅ τις ἐμπελάδην φώς/ ἀμφιβρότην κώδειαν ἀπὸ ξιφέεσσιν ἀμηθείς,/ ἢ ἅτε κερνοφόρος ζάκορος βωμίστρια Ῥείης,/ εἰνάδι λαοφόροισιν ἐνιχρίμπτουσα κελεύθοις,/ μακρὸν ἐπεμβοάᾳ γλώσσῃ θρόον, οἱ δὲ τρέουσιν/ Ἰδαίης ῥιγηλὸν ὅτ’ εἰσαΐωσιν ὑλαγμόν. Often too in his distress he cries aloud even as one whose head, the body’s master, has just been cut off with the sword; or as the acolyte with her tray of offerings, Rhea’s priestess, appearing on the public high-ways on the ninth day of the month raises a great shout with her voice, while the people flee in fear when they hear the horrible baying of the votary of Ida.54 There is no doubt that the similes here conjure up powerful pathetic visions in the mind’s eye.55 The scene is, perhaps, reminiscent of the death of Dolon at

53 54 55

Cf. Scarry on voice and its destruction under torture: Scarry (1985), 20, 54. See also the discussion of Marsyas’ loss of speech in Clarke (this volume, p. 211). Nic. Alex. 215–220. Translation modified from Gow & Scholfield. For this passage as evocative of Herakles’ beheading of the Hydra and its evocation of terror, see: Sistakou (2012), 223–224.

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Il. 10.457 in which his head falls to the ground while its owner is still speaking. It is hard to think of a more eloquent combination of the theme of fragmentation and loss of self than amputation above the shoulders. Here, the stress on the body’s master and the incongruity of the post-decapitation shouting seems to underscore the theme of the loss of the human voice and the sense of self. In the second simile, the question of the voice is again particularly prominent: the loud shouts that the votaries raise are both terrifying, driving listeners to flee from the sound of their “horrible baying”. Reiterating the reference to dogs’ baying, the entire description closes by likening the victim to a wild bull, who “bellows and howls incoherently” (ἐσφαλμένα βρυχανάαται/ ὠρυδόν, 221–222) in the “frenzy of his mind” (νόου λύσσῃ). If this passage is meant to help us understand the nature of the shouts and voice of the poisoned, then its implications are particularly problematic. It not only phrases the loss of self and the dehumanisation of the voice, but also shapes the social meaning and social context of suffering. Nicander rehearses, then, a range of different, nuanced forms of mental derangement as part of the effects of poison. These forms of psychological experience are conceptualised in terms of physical damage: allusions, intertextual references, and similes, present mental experience in terms of themes of wounding and fragmentation. These episodes also emphasise a psychological deracination and fragmentation that poses challenges for the victim’s sense of self: the victim is continually de-socialised and dehumanised by psychological wandering and the changes to their voice.

4

Conclusion

Nicander’s didactic epic, the Alex., contains an intense, nuanced interest in the nature of pain. This fascination is bound up with the author’s didactic objectives: in setting out to teach the reader how to recognise poisons through their deleterious effect on their unfortunate victims, he returns repeatedly to the pain they experience. This interest, however, does not simply encompass the description of specific pain sensations, perceptions, or symptoms, but is far more all-encompassing, involving aspects of physical defragmentation, psychological and mental forms of alienation and suffering, and undermining the victim’s sense of self, social identity, and humanity. One of the features of this treatment of pain is the way in which it gives social and cultural meaning to suffering. There is little in this poem that speaks directly to individual, subjective experiences of pain. Significantly, however, the poem continually frames the pain experience against different models

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for understanding pain in this culture. Scientific language, especially in the description of pain symptoms, is combined with vocabulary for suffering and anguish drawn from other contexts, especially Tragedy. Symptoms, moreover, are represented in language that is connected to medical diagnostic contexts and, possibly, doctor-patient interactions. Nicander’s discussions of physical fragmentation and mental derangement are framed against contemporary social understandings and literary representations of illness experience and poetic examples of suffering. Such framing draws together multiple ways of understanding pain experience, but also gives meaning and context to the suffering of poison victims. In combining these ways of understanding suffering, Nicander constructs a provocative and striking representation of pain.

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Hippocrates. (1839–1861) Œuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, 10 vols. É. Littré (ed.). Paris: Bailliere. Nicander. (2002–2007) Alexipharmaca. J-M. Jacques (ed. & transl.), Oeuvres. ii–iii. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Sophocles. (2013) Philoctetes. S. Schein (ed.), Sophocles Philoctetes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Modern Scholarship Budelmann, F. (2007) ‘The Reception of Sophocles’ Representation of Physical Pain’, American Journal of Philology 128 (4): 443–467. Bowersock, G. (1994) Fiction as History: from Nero to Julian. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dodds, E.R. (1951) The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gärtner, F. (2015) Galeni De locis affectis. Berlin: De Gruyter Akademie Forschung. Gow, A. & Scholfield, A. (1953) Nicander the Poems and Poetical Fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hatzimichali, M. (2009) ‘Poetry, Science, and Scholarship: the Rise and Fall of Nicander of Colophon’, in M.A. Harder & R. Regtuit & G. Wakker & A. Amühl (eds), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. (Hellenistica Groningana, 15). Leuven: Peeters, pp. 19– 40. Hughes, J. (2017) Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, J. (2000) Camp Pain: Talking with Chronic Pain Patients. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jacques, J.M. (2004) ‘Médecine et poésie: Nicandre de Colophon et ses poèmes iologiques’ in J. Leclant & J. Jouanna (eds), La médecine grecque antique. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, pp. 109–124. Johnston, I. (2006) Galen on Diseases and Symptoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kleinman, A. (1988) The Illness Narratives. Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition. Basic Books. King, D. (2015) ‘Galen and Grief: The Construction of Grief in Galen’s Clinical Work’, in A. Chaniotis & P. Ducrey (eds), Constructing Emotions ii. Emotions in Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, and Material Culture. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, pp. 251– 272. King, D. (2018) Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. King, D. (forthcoming) ‘Pain, Suffering, and Religion’ in J. Bremmer & J. Rüpke & G. Petridou (eds), Religion in Context: Greco-Roman Religious Practices in their SocioCultural Milieux. (Der Neue Pauly Supplement).

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Magnelli, E. (2006) ‘Nicander’s Chronology: a Literary Approach’, in M.A. Harder & R. Regtuit & G. Wakker (eds), Beyond the Canon. Leuven: Peeters, pp. 185–204. Morris, D. (1991) The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Oikonomakos, K. (1999) ‘Les «Alexipharmaques» et le « Corpus hippocratique»: Nicandre lecteur d’Hippocrate?’, Revue des Études Grecques 112 (1): 238–252. Overduin, F. (2009) ‘The Fearsome Shrewmouse: Pseudo-Science in Nicander’s «Theriaca»?’, in M.A. Harder & R. Regtuit, G. Wakker & A. Amühl (eds), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. (Hellenistica Groningana, 15). Leuven: Peeters, pp. 79–93. Overduin, F. (2015) Nicander: Theriaca. A Literary Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Overduin, F. (2016) ‘Beauty in Suffering: Disgust in Nicander’s Theriaca’ in D. Lateiner & D. Spithas (eds), The Ancient Emotion of Disgust. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 141–156. Padel, R. (1995) Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. New York: Princeton University Press. Papadopoulou, M. (2009) ‘Scientific Knowledge and Poetic Skill: Colour Words in Nicander’s «Theriaca» and «Alexipharmaca»’, in M.A. Harder & R. Regtuit & G. Wakker & A. Amühl (eds), Nature and Science in Hellenistic Poetry. (Hellenistica Groningana, 15). Leuven: Peeters, pp. 95–119. Petridou, G. (2018) ‘Laughing Matters: Chronic Pain and Bodily Fragmentation in Lucian’s Podagra’, Illinois Classical Studies 43 (2): 488–506. Saïd, S. (2009) ‘From Homeric Ate to Tragic Madness’, in W. Harris (ed), Mental Disorders in Classical Antiquity. Leiden: Brill, pp. 363–393. Scarry, E. (1985) The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Scarry, E. (2007) ‘Among Schoolchildren: The Use of Body Damage to Express Physical Pain’, in S. Coakley & K. Shelemay (eds), Pain and its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture. Cambridge MA, London: Harvard University Press, pp. 279– 316. Schein, S. (2013) Sophocles Philoctetes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scullin, S.E. (2012) Hippocratic Pain. [Dissertation]. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Sorabji, R. (2002) Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siegel, R. (1976) Galen on the affected parts. Basel: Karger. Sistakou, E. (2012) The Aesthetics of Darkness: a Study of Hellenistic Romanticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander. (Hellenistica Groningana, 17). Leuven: Peeters. Thumiger, C. (2009) ‘The Early Greek Medical Vocabulary of Insanity’ in W. Harris (ed), Mental Disorders in Classical Antiquity. Leiden: Brill, pp. 61–95. Toohey, P. (1996) Epic Lessons: An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry. London: Routledge.

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Touwaide, A. (1991) ‘Nicandre: de la science à la poésie: contribution à l’exégèse de la poésie médicale grecque’, Aevum 65: 65–101. Weissberg, L. (1989) ‘Language’s Wound: Herder, Philoctetes, and the Origin of Speech’, MLN 104: 548–579.

chapter 4

Emotional Persuasion: Communicating Pain in Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae Sarah Lawrence

Research in the medical community over the past ten years has made it clear that our perception of physical pain is intensely subjective; not only is it clear that various factors affect an individual’s perception of their own pain, but it is also (painfully) clear that factors such as the somatic appearance, group membership, or status, of patients frequently affects the perception of their pain by health professionals.1 Whether these judgments are inspired by conscious or unconscious biases, or by genuine difficulties in interpreting the facial expressions of groups other than our own, effectively communicating physical pain is a complex and difficult business. These issues connect in turn to studies of the way in which empathy is inspired and felt. There has been intense discussion of the extent to which empathy is enhanced by such factors as membership of the same perceived social group and likewise limited if no sense of social connection is in place.2 In this chapter, I will demonstrate that this difficulty appears to have been also recognised in a Roman context by examining the narratives of pain created by declaimers as they attempted to sway free, relatively elite, audiences towards sympathy, and even empathy, with different victims, by using emotional persuasion. As will become clear, the speakers appear to approach this task with a keen sense of the subjectivity of their audiences’ perceptions when it comes to other peoples’ bodies.

1 See for instance: Mende-Siedlecki, Lin, Ferron, Drain & Goharzad (2021), Trawalter, Hoffman & Waytz (2012), Wandner, Scipio, Hirsh, Torres & Robinson (2012), Forgiarini, Gallucci & Maravita (2011). 2 Decety (2009); Breithaupt (2019), 13, reads the connection of perceived similarities of sufferer and observer to empathy (“coexperience”) as given. This tendency is potentially exacerbated by the cognitive cost of experiencing empathy: Cameron, Hutcherson, Ferguson, Scheffer, Hadjiandreou, & Inzlicht (2019).

© Sarah Lawrence, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004677463_005

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A Source for Roman Rhetoric and Empathy

Roman men in the early imperial period practised declamation as a means of refining and demonstrating their oratorical ability. There were two primary kinds of exercise: suasoriae and controversiae. In the former case, speakers gave a speech of advice to a historical figure (such as Alexander the Great) facing a dilemma (whether to sail beyond the edge of the known world: Sen. Suasoriae 1.1). Controversiae, on the other hand, were built around a law and a scenario to which that law could be applied, and declaimers then gave speeches on either side of the argument. Scholars have looked closely at the laws from these controversiae and established that they bear little resemblance to any actual Roman laws; so too the scenarios, which feature pirates, tyrants, and tragically complicated familial dramas.3 Consequently, declamation, as represented in Seneca the Elder’s collection from the first half of the first century ce, is full of strange and grotesque scenarios that a Roman was unlikely to ever encounter in real life.4 Nevertheless, it has been convincingly argued that declamation speaks to Roman social concerns and values: the argumentation of the fictional cases links to the consolidation and negotiation of Roman hierarchies and values.5 This argument is even more applicable when we look at the persuasive function of emotion in the controversiae. Michael Mendelson, largely in the context of the suasoriae, has noted the importance of declamatory rhetoric “placing ideas and arguments in a humanised framework that makes practical, experiential sense.”6 Speakers must present a speech for Hannibal that both acknowledges his real existence as a Carthaginian general of the second century bce, and also contains elements of persuasion that will convince and dazzle a Roman audience of the first century ce. In the case of the disembodied world of the controversiae, however, the speaker does not need to engage with a particular society or time period in which their characters exist so long as they observe the outline of the (often fictional) law and the scenario on which the controversia is based.7 Moreover, when it comes to emotional persuasion, there is no neces3 Berti (2015), 31. 4 Antony Corbeill notes the possibility that this is due to a need to provide scope for dramatic display of the genre’s most memorable performances, although he finally subscribes to an argument that this entails a move to quarantine declamation from the concerns of Roman politics into the ‘fantasy land’ of declamation: Corbeill (2008), 73. 5 Corbeill (2008), 81–82; Beard (1993), 56; Henderson (2018), 214. 6 Mendelson (1994), 94. 7 The difficulty of tying specific controversiae to particular contexts is pronounced, as Victoria Pagán notes: Pagán (2007/2008), 172.

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sity for the speaker to convey or summon responses that are appropriate to the historical/social context of their fictional defendants and accusers because these parameters simply do not exist; the only available emotional landscape for the controversiae is that of their contemporary audience and the narrative that the speakers create (as shall become clear) is designed to inhabit that landscape. As Aristotle sets out in the Rhetoric, a speaker, hoping to be persuasive, needs to focus on ensuring that their audience is in the ‘right frame of mind’ to be convinced (2.1). He goes on to explain this in terms of emotion, and argues that, for a speaker to use emotional persuasion effectively, they must understand three things: the state of mind of an individual affected by the emotion they wish to summon, the usual targets of that emotion, and the triggers that induce that emotion (2.1). All these factors rely on a speaker understanding and reflecting the emotional landscape of their listeners.8 Thus any declaimer who wanted to stand out from the crowd needed to know what would evoke the emotions—both positive and negative—of his contemporary audience. This was an essential technique: the power of emotional persuasion was widely recognised in the ancient world.9 In fact, it was believed that emotional manipulation could be a more effective technique of persuasion than rational judgement.10 Considered in this light, I argue that the controversiae give us a fascinating opportunity to delve into the Roman psyche—separate from the political and legal considerations of oratory that frame actual trials or political debates.11 Just as they are free from the constraints of historical and geographical settings, controversiae are free from the constraints of dealing with politically or legally important subject matter. Thus, one of the criticisms frequently levelled at declamation by the Romans—its triviality—is a potential gift if we are looking to establish the parameters of how narratives were used to articulate and

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In her excellent chapter on imagination and emotion, Ruth Webb (1997, 125) makes the same point more broadly: “If they (the speakers) were to be effective, they had to correspond to specific experiences, or to shared values and cultural norms which could be recognised by the audience and mobilised by the speaker”. A similar imperative regarding ‘understanding the soul’ of one’s audience is traced in Aristotle’s philosophy by Alexander Nehamas (1994), 259. Sanders (2016), 13. Cic. de Or. 2.201; Valerius Maximus describes several exempla in which emotion outweighs any legally admissible evidence: 8.1.abs.2; 8.1.abs.3 and 8.1.abs.7. The same argument has been convincingly made in the modern world: Gordon-Smith (2019). Analysing declamation in this way also speaks to Chaniotis and Ducrey’s argument that the study of ancient emotion must go beyond drama and philosophy: Chaniotis and Ducrey (2013), 13.

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induce emotions in elite Roman society.12 In the case studies in this chapter, the task facing an orator is to find a way to make the pain they are describing resonate with the audience: to make the pain speak with words.13 The challenge is exacerbated by the fact that pain is often seen by modern commentators to be altogether inimical to words, or to language.14 Elaine Scarry’s eloquent commentary on this topic has since been challenged by scholars in the sciences and the humanities, but the fact remains that an individual’s physical pain is a difficult experience to evoke for another person.15 Today, given that we lack an objective system of measurement, we tend to use descriptive terms (stabbing, burning, sharp, dull) to try to communicate our pain.16 From a rhetorical point of view we could put this in terms of the link between vivid description (enargeia) and emotional arousal described by ancient authors on oratory and rhetoric, where language is pushed hard to communicate feeling.17 As Quintilian demonstrates, the key technique necessary for a listener to have events in oculis is the presentation of vivid images conveyed with precise and lucid language (Inst. 6.2.31–32). We might feel there is still a distinction between bringing images of physical injury and pain into a listener’s mind and the listener truly understanding that pain, but the focus on bringing images to life as it is discussed in ancient oratory suggests that speakers are aiming to have their audience experiencing empathy, as well as sympathy.18 Although empathy is, strictly speaking, a concept that lacked a name until the early 1900s, we see what look like elements of ‘feeling with’ in these descriptions of emotional persuasion, as well as ‘feeling for’.19 For instance, Cicero

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Amongst many examples: Sen. Controv. 3.pr.15; 3.pr.18; 4.pr.2; 9.pr.5. The actual performances, of course, would have also benefited from the voice, gestures and props of the speaker. Hall (2008), 220–227. The nature of Seneca the Elder’s collection, of course, is such that he must have selected the extracts from speakers with the assumption that they would be adequately powerful in written form. Scarry (1985), 3–6. Dr Kit Morrell pointed out to me that one of the standard pain scales (VAN) actually uses imaginary pain as its end point, thus asking individuals to draw on an entirely personalised experience of pain; see discussion of this pain scale in: Bergh, Jakobsson & Sjörström (2008), 484–491. For example: Ferber (2010), 205–223; van Hooft (2003), 255–262. van Hooft (2003), 257. See also Bergh, Jakobsson & Sjörström (2008), 484–485. See Webb (1997) 112–127 for an overview of this topic. Cf. Baltussen (2009), 83–84 (ekphrasis). Michael Fischer writes powerfully on the “special connection between empathy and pain”: Fischer (2017), 450. See Matravers (2017), 2 on the development of empathy as a concept in the 1900s; note however the wonderful example from Ovid, Met. 14.185–186.

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repeatedly refers to what a modern theorist might call ‘emotional contagion’: the audience ‘catches’ their feelings from those the speaker feels and projects.20 Dana Munteanu argues that Aristotle also alludes to the empathetic charge of “aesthetic emotion” in De Anima: “We feel as if we were afraid when we imagine a dangerous situation depicted in art.”21 Munteanu notes too that audience reactions to fictional emotion can actually be more powerful than reactions to carefully objective accounts of real events: narratives can be more powerful than ‘facts’.22 Of course all of this depends on the quality of the artist’s power in drawing the listener into the landscape of feeling that they are attempting to create.23 In the Controversiae we have the advantage that Seneca clearly tells us his opinion of the quality of the speakers’ performances, and the majority of the examples included have been recorded precisely because they were effective examples of the genre.24 As a result we are in a good position to see those rhetorical techniques that were judged most likely to make the audience ‘feel with’ the experiences of those described.25 The politically unimportant, makebelieve scenarios of the declaimers in Seneca’s collection can provide us with a rich source for investigating which tools and techniques orators used to create empathy in their audiences when it comes to pain.

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I will explore the creation of this ‘feeling with’ in the audience by comparing two particular controversiae: 10.4 and 2.5; these two controversiae have been selected as they contain two of the most extended, focused descriptions of the infliction of physical pain on individuals in the collection, yet present two very different scenarios.26 It is also important that there are ten declaimers in common between the two controversiae, so there are good grounds for comparing

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As at Cic. de Or. 2.190 and 191. Matravers (2017) 20–22. Munteanu (2009), 125. “Arist., De an. 427b18–25.” Original emphasis. Munteanu (2009), 131. Munteanu (2009), 134–135 on the dangers of badly executed appeals to audience feeling. Henderson (2018), 179–183 argues that Seneca’s editorial persona is critical to an understanding of the Controversiae. Potentially not only in an emotional sense; some studies suggest that the same parts of the brain activated by a personal experience of pain are also activated when the subject ‘vicariously’ experiences someone else’s suffering: Singer and Klimecki (2014), R876. The text of Seneca the Elder used throughout is that of Michael Winterbottom as the most recent scholarly edition of the Controversiae (1974); all translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

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the approaches of the same speakers to what are depicted as quite different kinds of pain.27 The former case (10.4) explores a charge of injury to the state against a man who collected exposed children and maimed them to create more effective beggars, with the aim of living on their earnings. The latter case (2.5) concerns a charge of ingratitude levelled at her husband by the wife of a tyrannicide who, although she maintained silence when tortured by the tyrant in the lead up to his assassination, was subsequently divorced by her husband for barrenness. On first sight the two cases look as though they should share some common ground in terms of the management of audience perceptions: we might assume that accounts of the physical pain suffered by the maimed children and by the woman under torture would provide the groundwork for similar appeals to pity and creation of empathy. Despite one reference to the enjoyment the educator (foster father) takes in his violence towards the children, in neither case is sadism the motive. The use of force against the victims in both cases is pragmatic; designed at 10.4 to create an opportunity for profit and at 2.5 to elicit information. Yet there is a striking difference in the way that pain is storied when it comes to the orators’ representation of its effect on the body, the means of inflicting pain, the situation of that pain, and whose perception is used to focalise the pain. All these factors ensure that the speakers’ appeals to empathy are finely tuned to assumed audience perceptions of the victims involved: the pain of different victims requires different kinds of stories. 2.1 Physical Damages To begin with the maimed children. One of the most striking aspects of Controv. 10.4 is the graphic way in which the effects of their “foster father’s” mutilation of the exposed children’s bodies is conveyed by the speakers. The extract from Cassius Severus’ speech (Controv. 10.4.2) borders on the grotesque; we are shown mutilated arms (trunca bracchia), dislocated joints in the feet (convulsi pedum articuli sunt), ankles twisted out of place (extorti tali), shattered shins (elisa crura) and the educator pulping a child’s thighs ( femina contudit). Cassius depicts the educator as finding humour in the process of beating the shattered shoulders of one charge into a mangled lump.28 Vibius Gallus (Controv. 10.4.3) maintains a similar fixation on the broken bodies of the beggars,

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The speakers who are common to both selections made by Seneca are: Porcius Latro, Cestius Pius, Albucius Silus, Triarius, Cornelius Hispanus, Iulius Bassus, Argentarius, Arellius Fuscus, Iunius Gallio and Fulvius Sparsus. Excerpts from twenty speakers are listed in total for 2.5 and twenty-three for 10.4. alterius diminutas scapulas in deforme tuber extundit et risum in crudelitate captat.

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describing amputated hands (praecisas manus), eyes that have been plucked out (erutos oculos) and broken feet ( fractos pedes). The declaimers do not limit themselves to describing the damage done to the exposed children, they also draw a clear connection between the injuries they have sustained and the painful effects of these injuries on the way that the children function. We see blind children dependent on canes, unable to observe the proceedings of the fictional court case and ironically commanded to beg passersby for alms using their eyes (Controv. 10.4.2, 10.4.4, 10.4.10), children with broken legs forced to drag their bodies along the ground (Controv. 10.4.2, 10.4.4, 10.4.10, 10.4.21, 10.4.22), and children whose tongues have been removed forced into mute appeals (Controv. 10.4.6, 10.2.24). In an extreme manifestation of this idea, Triarius uses a series of adjectives as substantives to turn the children into pure representations of their injuries (Controv. 10.4.4: debilis … mute … caece).29 The story of the children becomes entirely about their wounds, a second social erasure after their initial exposure.30 Consistently, the declaimers refer to concrete injuries to the body by naming the body parts that are affected and qualifying the nouns with participles or adjectives, which describe the damage done.31 This creates a painfully vivid picture, interspersed with reminders of how these kinds of injury would debilitate their victims. The extracts are also replete with verbs that leave the audience little escape from the agency of the educator and the brutal physical processes involved. Frango, contundo, praecido, eruo, perdo, debilito and amputo feature throughout the declamations.32 The kind of man who would inflict such force on living bodies is made clear; most graphically, he is referred to with the adjective ossifragus (bone-breaker, 10.4.2) and termed a carnifex (butcher, 10.4.5)— both words that link the educator inextricably to the breaking up of bodies. Less vividly, but very consistently, he is termed cruel by the declaimers.33 As

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Iulius Bassus creates a similar effect at Controv. 10.4.5: hic caecus est, hic debilis, hic mutus; so too Cassius Severus at Controv. 10.4.2: produc, agedum, familiam semivivam, tremulam, debilem, caecam, mancam, famelicam. Slattery (2000), 6. 10.4.2: trunca bracchia; convulsi pedum articuli; elisa crura; extorti tali; diminutae scapulae; resolutis vertebris; 10.4.3: debilia membra; praecisas manus; erutos oculos; fractos pedes; 10.4.9: membra debilia. frango: 10.4.2; 10.4.3; contundo: 10.4.2 praecido: 10.4.3; 10.4.6; eruo: 10.4.3; perdo: 10.4.9; 10.4.11; debilito: 10.4.9; 10.4.11; 10.4.12; 10.4.15; 10.4.17; 10.4.22; amputo: 10.4.2; 10.4.17. 10.4.2: The educator’s actions are characterised with the verb saevio and reference is made to his crudelitas here and at 10.4.3; he and/or his actions are described with the adjective crudelis at 10.4.4; 10.4.6; 10.4.9; 10.4.11; 10.4.12 and 10.4.19. The superlative form crudelissimus is used at 10.4.7.

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the contemporary usage of the term crudelitas in Valerius Maximus’ collection of exempla indicates, the term is overwhelmingly associated with the infliction of extensive, debilitating and frequently creative physical pain and distress.34 The violence inflicted on the exposed children, and the ongoing pain it occasions, are vivid, precise and concrete—all qualities that ancient rhetoricians recognised as elements designed to make the audience feel with great immediacy; that is, to be empathetic towards the victims. If we turn now to the depiction of the torture of the tyrannicide’s brave wife by the tyrant and his minions in Controv. 2.5, a rather different picture emerges. There is much less reference to the specific damage inflicted on the woman’s body and more emphasis on the action that precipitates the injury. Arellius Fuscus states “Her limbs are cut with whips, her body is beaten with blows, blood is forced from her very organs.”35 Cornelius Hispanus conveys similar information: “all her limbs were torn, all joints were battered. The body cut with lashes, burnt with fire, battered with tortures.”36 While these images are certainly unpleasant, they lack the precise details that render the broken bodies belonging to the exposed children so vividly. We are not told by Fuscus which limbs are cut, where she is beaten on her body or which organs yield blood. Similarly, the limbs, joints and body described by Hispanus are generic; the adjective omnis in this instance has the effect of diminishing the impact of the injuries, rather than increasing it, because, as modern readers, we are not given enough concrete detail, particularly in regards to the woman’s reaction to these injuries, to effectively picture the nature of the pain.37 Some more explicit details on the injuries to her body are given in the form of the imagined commands of the tyrant, but this itself has a two-fold distancing effect. Firstly, the injuries are conveyed with speech, rather than a descriptive statement of ‘fact’, and secondly, they are depicted as prospective rather than inflicted. The com-

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Exempla were commonly known short anecdotes designed to encapsulate or typify particular ideas, like crudelitas (cruelty). In Valerius’ collection of exempla, the chapter dedicated to cruelty includes: the removal of eyes or eyelids (9.2.1 and ext.1); hands, feet or thumbs being cut off (9.2.2, 4, ext.5 and 8); children being skewered on spears (9.2.3); the use of machinery to secure a slow, excruciating death (9.2.ext.1 and ext.9); people being cut in half while living (9.2.ext.4); and slow deaths involving the deliberate, close intermingling of live people and rotting corpses, either human or animal (9.2.ext.10 and 11). 2.5.4–5: flagellis caeduntur artus, verberibus corpus abrumpitur, exprimiturque ⟨sanguis⟩ ipsis vitalibus. 2.5.5: omnia membra laniata, omnes artus convolsi sunt. scissum corpus flagellis, igne exustum, convulsum tormentis. See too Papirius Fabianus: convolsis laceratisque membris nec adhuc sufficientibus … (Controv. 2.5.6)

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mands are horrific, but they are—after all—yet to be followed in the hypothetical torture chamber of the hypothetical case.38 The exception to this pattern is the speaker Albucius Silus who does bring the woman’s pain vividly to life with a detailed description of its effect on her body, stating “She was discarded with twisted hands, disarticulated joints: not yet had the strength returned to her body.”39 Despite Henderson’s inclusion of this quote as an example of “OTT bodyripping rep and mater melodramatics”, there is one critical word in this final extract from Albucius: nondum—not yet.40 It is clearly envisaged that the woman will recover from the effects of her torture and that her pain will be/has been temporary: the orators project a future for the woman where her strength will return and she will heal. For this reason, there is debate amongst the speakers as to whether the torture has had any role to play in the woman’s ‘failure’ to bear a child. Papirius Fabianus initially appears to dismiss the possibility that the two things are connected; he counsels instead that Natura is unpredictable and that a child may well come with time (2.5.7). Porcius Latro suggests that the lack of children is purely down to the tyrannicide’s preoccupation with his great deed, which meant he did not have the time to ‘enjoy’ his wife (2.5.14) and this point is also taken up by Buteo (2.5.16). Arellius Fuscus depicts both husband and wife as so wrapped up in the downfall of the tyrant that they had little time for sex (2.5.4). A connection between barrenness and torture is suggested by some speakers (including Fabianus in rebuttal to an imagined counter-point) but it is not exploited, despite the fact that it would be a very powerful argument in support of the husband’s ingratitude.41 The speakers voice very little sense of any permanent injury, or ongoing physical pain, as a result of torture; Romanius Hispo sums up the damage to the woman with a piece of magnificent understatement “You will forgive the little woman, I think, if I say she is tired”.42 This ‘tiredness’, and her temporary weakness as imagined by Albucius Silus, are the only traces of lasting physical pain suffered by the loyal wife. The wife’s physical integrity is in stark contrast both to what we know (and the Romans must have known) about the lasting physical damage occasioned by

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See Iunius Gallio: seca, verbera, oculos lancina … (Controv. 2.5.6); so too Iulius Bassus: ure, cade ventrem … and Argentarius: caede ventrem, ne tyrannicidas pariat (Controv. 2.5.7). descrebatur distortis manibus, emotis articulis; nondum in sua membra artus redierant (Controv. 2.5.9). Henderson (2018), 192–194. Papirius Fabianus, Iulius Bassus and Argentarius (2.5.7). Cf. Pagán (2007/2008), 172 who assumes that the torture “destroys” the woman’s fertility. ignoscetis, puto, mulierculae, si dixero: fessa est (2.5.5).

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the kinds of torture described here, and to the permanent, crippling damage inflicted on the exposed children in Controv. 10.4.43 The contrast between the apparent recovery of the wife and the ongoing suffering of the children may in part speak to a fundamental difference in the way that certain kinds of physical injury are framed in terms of lasting pain. One thing that seems clear from the suffering of the children in 10.4 is that the verb debilito is used to refer specifically to an ongoing impairment of function, rather than generalised damage; in this sense it is in line with the definition of mutilation suggested by Nicholas C. Lund-Moflese: “acts of mutilation violate the physical integrity of a person.”44 As the declaimers make clear, these children have not only been disfigured, but they have lost some fundamental aspect of the way that their bodies should function, such as sight, the ability to walk or the ability to use their hands—they have been made less than they were in a manner which will create the maximum ongoing psychological, as well as physical, pain.45 Indeed, Cassius Severus claims that the educator actually considered the natural strengths of the children when choosing how to mutilate them: the quick tongued are made mute, the keen eyed are made blind, the future tall young man crippled so as to force him to crawl along the ground (10.4.2). This taunting violence targets the children’s physical strengths and replaces them with weaknesses designed to inflict the deepest pain on every level. While the experience of physical disability in the ancient world could vary widely according to economic and social status,46 even those elite individuals who could survive in relative comfort are depicted by our sources as experiencing an ongoing sense of vulnerability and even humiliation attendant on their condition.47 In Seneca’s own collection, Controv. 1.4 depicts a war hero who, having lost his hands in battle, cannot act to avenge his wife’s act of adultery without

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In the context of female martyrologies of the medieval period Robert Mills has suggested that the similarly undamaged bodies of women who have experienced torture and mutilation speak to the inviolability of the Christian community; he also contrasts this condition with what the community must have known about the real effects of such treatment: Mills (2005), 117–119. Lund-Molfese (2004), 64. This type of impact contrasts with later historical understandings of mutilation that can be applied to a more purely aesthetic injury, for example: Skinner (2016), 26; Koffler (1983), 123; and Biernoff (2011), 668. Garland (1995), 26. Garland (1995), 78–89 notes the curious exception of cognomina, which, though they frequently refer to physical abnormalities, were generally carried with pride from one generation to the next.

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(to no avail) calling on the aid of his son.48 Later petitions from Roman Egypt also indicate that individuals like Gaius Gemellus Horigenes could believe they were being targeted as objects of abuse by their neighbours as a result of physical impairment—in this case blindness.49 Indeed, deformity (whether congenital or inflicted) could be read as an ill-omen in the Roman context.50 Mutilation carried enough of a charge that it could even be used as a means of dishonouring individuals by damaging representations of their faces.51 On a physiological level, there is some evidence to suggest that the sight of the kind of bodily mutilation that is permanently disabling is hardwired into animal brains as a sign of extreme danger.52 Perhaps for this reason we can see across a range of periods and cultures that there is a strong rhetorical connection between injuries that interfere with bodily integrity and characterisations of extreme cruelty and ongoing suffering.53 The injuries inflicted on the children in 10.4 create a special hell for the victims in which injury solidifies into permanent impairment as well as providing a source of ongoing physical, emotional, and social pain. Their experience of pain is depicted as fundamentally changing the way that both they themselves, and their wounds, are perceived by others: what was an act of cruelty inflicted against them becomes potentially a sign of their unworthiness or even evil. This is uncomfortably married to an ongoing dependence on others—both their educator and the able-bodied citizens who may or may not choose to give them coins. The nature of the injuries inflicted ensures that the children continue to suffer great pain throughout their lives but also potentially complicates the way 48

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Sarah Covington has noted that there is a particular discourse around the perceived loss of virility experienced by disabled soldiers in the modern period: Covington (2008), 20. See also Koven (1994), 1171. Draycott (2015), 196–197. Iunius Gallio (10.4.8) describes the presence of the mutilated children as providing bad omens (dira omina) at weddings and grim premonitions (tristia auspicia) during public rites. See too Suet. Aug. 83 for Augustus’ view that the deformed and disabled were “jokes of Natura and bad omens” (ludibria naturae malique ominis). Outside of Controv. 10.4, these references largely seem to refer to congenital deformities. For a modern discussion: Garland (1995), 23–26. Varner (2001), 47–48. The connection between deliberate attempts to humiliate or dishonour and the use of mutilation as a punishment has been noted in several different historical and social contexts, for example: Skinner (2016), 33; Skinner (2014), 47; Koffler (1983), 123. For example: Azevedo, Volchan, Imbiriba, Rodrigues, Oliveira, Oliveira, Lutterbach & Vargas (2005), 256 and Oliveira, Oliveira, Joffily, Pereira-Junior, Lang, Pereira, Mirtes, Figueira, & Volchan (2009), 872. Covington (2008), 25 and Skinner (2016), 50–51. For a specifically Roman context, see Lisa Trentin on ‘bad’ emperors ‘manufacturing’ deformity: Trentin (2011), 201.

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in which their pain will be viewed by those they beg from in such a way that sympathy, let alone empathy, may well be reduced.54 Interrogative torture, in Controv. 2.5, is a different case. The loyal wife is certainly exposed to terrible torments, some directed at her most vulnerable and private body parts as Iunius Gallio suggests (2.5.6).55 However, the nature of torture as a rhetorical device in the Roman world was such that, if women were shown to successfully resist the demands of the torturer, they were both empowered and ennobled, even if they were of relatively low status.56 The injuries that the uxor suffers, then, are not only a source of pain that the declaimers depict as transitory but also demonstrate that their victim is not vulnerable or weak.57 This perhaps explains some of the agency placed with the loyal wife by the declaimers; Porcius Latro has the woman breezily dismiss her imminent torture by stating “It’s fine … (it is not as though) I’m being summoned to a dirty weekend.”58 In the same excerpt, the wife is shown daily (cotidie) putting pressure on her husband to kill the tyrant and even wishing she could offer herself as a companion in arms (comes). Three times she directly orders him to go up to the tyrant’s stronghold and rescue the state (escende 2.5.10). Similarly, Arellius Fuscus comments that the help (adiutorium) of the loyal wife made her husband braver and more able to act against the tyrant himself (2.5.4). Undergoing the pain of torture is potentially humiliating; resisting torture elevates the victim.59 We can see this reflected in the fact that when declaimers argue for the husband against his wife, they attempt to undermine the woman’s endurance and her discretion, not by minimising the torture she has suffered, but by minimising the nature of her resistance. A potential argu-

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Scarry (2007), 285–286 notes that particularly ‘obscene’ kinds of bodily damage can in turn make the person in pain appear obscene; see Clarke (this volume p. 211). The sense of the expositi’s ongoing vulnerability and dependence is underlined by the declamatory convention (identified by Neil W. Bernstein) that, whatever their age, those exposed as children do not speak for themselves but are reliant on advocates: Bernstein (2009), 347. Henderson (2018), 192 refers to this piece of rhetoric as embodying “visceral sexual sadism”. See for example Epicharis in Tacitus’ Annals, 15.57 and the maids (ministrae) of Octavia in the same work 14.60. There is a similar dynamic for low status men: Lawrence (2016), 245–260. The reverse is true for high status Roman men and torture utterly demeans them—hence the famous example from Cassius Dio under Tiberius: 58.3.7. Bernstein (2009), 171–172 also notes the way in which the loyal wife’s resistance to torture highlights her virtue. 10.4.1: bene est … ad stuprum non vocor. Cf. Victoria Pagán, who states: “in spite of her extraordinary endurance, the declaimers put before our eyes a pathetic, pitiable image”. She does not suggest how we should then read the loyal wife’s commands to her husband to take action: Pagán (2007/2008), 175.

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ment is suggested by Latro, for instance, that the woman did not really know anything which she could reveal (2.5.19) and Romanius Hispo makes the same claim, together with an accusation that she had spoken freely about her own suspicions nonetheless (2.5.20).60 If the Roman audience accepted its veracity, the knowing silence of the loyal wife meant that the character would be seen to have suffered significantly less psychological and social pain than the expositi as a result of her physical injuries. On the contrary, she is respected, and raised up, by her community for her endurance of pain and so there is no risk that she will be rendered ‘other’ by her experiences (as are the disfigured children), and no need for the declaimers to work harder to evoke empathy with graphic details. It should be noted that in making this argument I have found myself in disagreement with the consensus of modern scholarship on 2.5, which maintains that the violence endured by the loyal wife is exceptionally graphic. Victoria Pagán describes the woman’s injuries as “extraordinary in both level of detail and vividness”;61 Neil Bernstein argues that the depiction is “quasipornographic”,62 and John Henderson describes it in terms of “controversial melodramas of sadistic drooling over body-tearing and excruciation”. He goes on to refer to certain parts of the description as “(X-rated)” and characterised by “visceral sexual sadism”.63 It is interesting that both Bernstein and Henderson see the violence depicted here as sexual and sadistic in nature. The only reference to any part of the body explicitly associated with sex, or to the woman in sexual terms, is at 2.5.6 where Gallio imagines the tyrant giving orders to burn “that part” (illa pars). He refers to this “part” in the context of the idea that the woman will no longer be able to please her husband, and there are also commands to “cut, beat, slice the eyes”—all actions that would presumably reduce a woman’s desirability.64 Outside of this one example, however, there seems to be little in the declamations to suggest sexualisation of the loyal wife in her torture, other than her gender.65 That the majority of the descriptions of her torture are neither gendered, nor uniquely graphic becomes particularly clear when we compare the case of the tortured male slave/prisoner of war at 10.5. 60

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Seneca does not react against Latro’s suggested argument that the wife knew nothing so it is presumably the latter part of Hispo’s accusation that he regards as being made “viciously and aggressively”—maligne et accusatorie. Pagán (2007/2008), 174. Bernstein (2012), 171. Henderson (2018), 188, 192. 2.5.6: seca, verbera, oculos lancina, fac iam ne uiro placeat matrix. A contrast can be draw with the depictions of torture inflicted on female Christian martyrs as at, for example, Prudent. Perist. 3.126–160.

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This old man from Olynthus, bought by the painter Parrhasius to serve as a model for his painting of Prometheus, is tortured to ensure the accuracy of the artist’s depiction. Parrhasius’ instructions, as imagined by Argentarius, are just as explicit as those of the tyrant in 10.4: “Stretch him like this, whip him like this, hold that expression he has right now on his face if you don’t want to be models yourselves.”66 So too Gavius Silo, who sets up a merciless ascending tricolon of abuse for the painter: He is flogged. “Not enough” Parrhasius says. He is burned. “Still not enough.” He is torn apart. “This is enough for the anger of Philip, but still not enough for the anger of Jupiter”.67 The same relentless catalogue of violence features in the excerpt from Musa’s declamation, together with emphasis on the weakness and vulnerability of the old man: “I will describe the fires, the blows, the tortures of the old Olynthian”.68 Cornelius Hispanus describes the final death of the slave in similarly graphic terms: “He dies under the torments from a final putrefaction of his limbs”.69 The declaimers seem to emphasise the extent of pain experienced by the victim in this controversia in part because his suffering is the final aim of the tortures. The torturers are not interested in any information the old man might reveal; the intention here is purely to inflict and witness pain: Parrhasius wants to see him suffering, resistance on his part has no value.70 The way in which the motivation of the perpetrator is described has a real effect on the way in which the pain of the victim is felt. In addition the Olynthian’s age, weakness and grief are all used as techniques to evoke the pity of the audience, stressing how deeply he experiences physical pain and how little he deserves it.71 This underlines 66 67 68

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10.5.3: sic intendite, sic caedite, sic istum quem fecit cummaxime vultum servate, ne sitis ipsi exemplar. 10.5.1: caeditur: “parum est” inquit; uritur: “etiamnunc parum est”; laniatur: “hoc” inquit “⟨in⟩ irato Philippo satis est, sed nondum in irato Iove”. 10.5.6: narraturus sum Olynthi senis ignes, verbera, tormenta. See also: 10.5.9 ex altera tortor cum ignibus, flagellis, eculeis and 10.5.10: “torque, verbera, ure”: sic iste carnifex colores temperat. 10.5.6: ultima membrorum tabe tormentis inmoritur. Hence the emphasis on increasing his visible pain, as at 10.5.2, 3 and also Triarius at 10.5.5: Parrhasius was shouting “You aren’t miserable enough yet, I say, you haven’t gone beyond your original expression yet.” (clamabat iste: nondum satis tristis es, nondum satis, inquam, adiecesti ad priorem vultum.) See for instance 10.5.9 with its emphasis on the Olynthian’s misery prior to torture; 10.5.4 and 11, which draw on the status and age of the slave as well as his distress; and 10.5.2 where the sorrows the Olynthian has already suffered are set out.

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an important point if we are classifying violence as sadistic; sadism only functions if distress occasioned by an individual’s personal experience of the pain is clearly visible, and in this respect the old Olynthian is shown to suffer far more than the loyal wife whose resistance and endurance are heroically pokerfaced.72 On these grounds, I would suggest that there has been a tendency to apply a modern sensitivity to violence enacted against women to the reading of the torture of the woman in 2.5; this obscures the fact that, in declamatory terms, the loyal wife’s experience of pain is depicted as being of a very different order to that of the Olynthian, or the children in 10.4. The key in this instance may be that both the abandoned children, and the old Olynthian, are not citizens: they are not members of the same ‘group’ as the imagined audience. Certainly, the loyal wife is a different gender to the assumed listeners, but modern psychological studies have indicated that it is far more an issue of status and broader group membership than gender which affect the perception of pain in others and our ability to empathise with that pain.73 The declaimers simply do not have to work as hard to make their audience empathise with the woman’s pain, because she is of a similar (imagined) status to the listeners.74 She is not visibly disfigured, humiliated, or legally compromised, so the audience’s sympathy can be evoked with far less detail on the declaimers’ part. 2.2 Tools and Location One sense in which Controv. 2.5 does incorporate more detail than 10.4, however, is in regard to the tools used to inflict pain on the victim. From the opening extract of Porcius Latro’s speech, the tortures suffered by the loyal wife have a physical presence; Latro imagines a scene where the tormenta are clearly on display (2.5.1); Arellius Fuscus refers to the apparatus crudelitatis ready for action against the woman and then opens a second coordinate clause with illa instrumenta, which are evocatively described as frangentia. The next sentence reminds the reader again of the tormenta in store (2.5.4). So too Romanius Hispo (tormenta, 2.5.5), Cornelius Hispanus (tormenta, 2.5.5), Papirius Fabianus (cruciatus, tyrannica tormenta saeventia, 2.5.6), Triarius (tormenta, 2.5.8)

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Breithaupt (2019), 161–162. See in particular Trawalter, Hoffman & Waytz (2012), 5–7. The same limitation of empathy in the presence of non-group members appears to be true in some experiments conducted on mice: de Waal (2019), 71. See Hu (2018), 354 for a more optimistic view that empathy for out-group members can be cultivated amongst humans. As Decety (2009, 365) puts it, the audience and the imagined woman already share ‘emotional resonance’.

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and Lucius Vicinius the Elder (tormenta, 2.5.19). These menacing but nondescript terms are illuminated by speakers who refer to the ‘horse’ (probably a kind of rack: eculeus: 2.5.2, 2.5.6), “whips” ( flagellae: 2.5.4, 2.5.5), “fire” (ignis: Both Romanius Hispo and Cornelius Hispanus 2.5.5, 2.5.6), “weighted plates” (lamnae: 2.5.6), “blows” (verbera: 2.5.4, 2.5.6) and “threats” (minaces: 2.5.4). These nouns are also picked up in verbs that are closely connected with particular instruments, for instance uror (2.5.7) or caedo (both Iulius Bassus and Argentarius at 2.5.7). It has been suggested that this kind of focus on instruments often serves as a way of foregrounding the corrupt mechanisms of a state that uses torture as a weapon.75 This works well for the ancient context of tyranny as represented in Seneca’s controversia landscape, where it is always a corrupt and damaging system of government.76 Nevertheless, the more we focus on the inanimate means of causing pain, the less immediately we are brought face to face with the pain itself. There is a risk of tools of torture distancing us from the victim, a technique that some scholars argue is essential to the very nature and process of torture.77 The point is clearly made regarding the power of the tyrant and the danger to the state inherent in the torture, but the focus on individual experience is less important. In contrast, the accounts of the pain inflicted on the exposed children in 10.4 only once feature an instrument used to cause that pain, at 10.2.24 where Labienus imagines the educator threatening to flog an underperforming beggar with lora (“leather lashes”). The only other reference that could be at all construed as referring to the tools used to deliver pain is a simile that compares the children’s injuries to the effects of “some kind of plague” (nescioquae tabes, 10.4.3). This means that, as previously noted, the process of inflicting pain is almost entirely conveyed with verbs that hammer home the force involved and, in the absence of other instruments, suggest the brutal, intimate use of one human body against another.78 As most verbs describing violence are transitive, it also means that the audience is consistently brought face to face with

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Morris (1991), 184: “… it (the torture instrument) represents the impersonal, mechanical power of whatever masked or unmasked authority stands behind its use.” See also Sontag (2003), 39. See Dunkle (1971), 12–15 for the typology of tyrants in declamation. Scarry (1985), 59; Scarry comments that a gun (for instance) provides critical distance between a torturer and their victim—following the path of the bullet with one’s eyes, however, puts the whole system at risk. See too Morris (1991), 183. A similar emphasis on tools is present in the torture of the old Olynthian at 10.5.9. The exception is uses of terms relating to cutting, which presuppose a blade of some kind (praecido: 10.4.3; 10.4.6); this is nevertheless a tool that requires close physical proximity.

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the body of the victim as a grammatical object under attack. The declaimers are striving to convey physical pain as vividly as possible to their listeners. The physical context in which pain is inflicted and viewed is also quite different between 2.5 and 10.4. While there are no clear details on where the mutilation of the children is carried out, there is no question regarding the public visibility of the expositi’s pain in 10.4. Not only do the injuries the children have sustained leave obvious evidence on their bodies, but visibility is very much the point of the injuries. The pain written on the children’s bodies is there for display; it is designed to elicit the pity and horror of a passersby who will hopefully give generously in response. As Fulvius Sparsus notes, the educator is focused on making the most of “public pity” (publica misericordia: 10.4.9) and this is reflected in his imagined instructions to the expositi to make the most of their personal injuries: “Go now” he says “and seek alms for me. You” he says “who have no eyes, ask with your eyes. You,” he says “who have lost your hands, ask with your hands. You, ask with your limbs, which you drag about, paralysed. Let each one canvass support via those things he doesn’t have.”79 If a beggar fails to bring in sufficient cash, the educator is imagined reconsidering their appearance; Mento has him comment to one child “It appears you don’t yet seem wretched enough to people.”80 Keeping in mind this cold, economic motivation, the best possible situation in which to beg is the one in which the greatest public exposure is guaranteed and so Iunius Gallio imagines the children being wheeled out for weddings, public rites, festival days, sacred days and celebrations to maximise the educator’s profits (10.4.8). The pain inflicted on the children, and their continued suffering, are by their very nature designed to be as public and visible as possible. The declaimers in turn reinforce the visibility of the pain by emphasising the idea of display in their attacks on the educator; both Cassius Severus and Murredius command him to bring forward the children with the term produco. This multivalent term applies (amongst other things) to the introduction of evidence in a court case, the entry of actors onto a stage and the display of slaves

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ite nunc, inquit, et alimenta mihi quaerite. tu, inquit, qui oculos non habes, per oculos rogato; tu, inquit, qui manus perdidisti, per manus rogat; tu per illa membra quae trahis debilia; per ea quisque quae non habet ambiat (10.4.10). apparet te nondum hominibus satis miserum videri (10.4.7). So too Fulvius Sparsus who has the educator using the appearance of the more successful maimed beggars as templates (exempla) for the mutilation of others (10.4.10).

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to be sold at auction.81 In each case, the people are asked to look at the spectacle of the expositi. Likewise, the imperative form of ostendo is used to command the educator to display his charges: from Cassius Severus “show us your captives!” From Iulius Bassus “show us your beggar-masters” and from Labienus “show us your foster children.”82 On the one hand, the expositi are stripped of privacy and dignity, on the other, the educator’s crimes are seen on their bodies, and we are told that those who see them experience a strong emotional response—as I will discuss below. The humiliation of the children is very much part of their pain, but also an essential prompt for the audience’s empathy. That is: the educator’s calculated focus on eliciting pity is, in turn, used to produce pity and empathy in the listeners who hear of it. In the case of the loyal wife, on the other hand, there is a certain intimacy to the scenes of torture, suggestive of enclosed and private spaces. Arellius Fuscus presents a suffocating image of the torture: The instruments of cruelty are prepared for the unlucky woman, and those instruments, which break the spirits of men by their very appearance, are brought forward to examine the inner workings of a womanly breast. Before the tortures the tyrant intimidates her with abuse and tortures her with threats: she is silent. She sees the focused face of the tyrant, she sees the threatening eyes, and she is silent … Her limbs are cut with whips, her body is beaten with blows, blood is forced from her very organs: she is silent … Her husband was groaning with anger at the captured state, and he was braver by his own plan and by the help of his wife: “How should I kill the tyrant? What part is most vulnerable to approaches? Where do the guards fall away? Where is the nature of the place susceptible to courage via its weaker fortification?”83 81 82

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OLD, 1620; produco, 2 b and c; 1 b. Ostende nobis tuos captivos (10.4.2 and 25); ostende mercedarios ⟨tuos⟩ and ostende nobis alumnos tuos respectively (10.4.25). ostendo too is closely associated with not only showing but exhibiting or displaying: OLD, 1403; ostendo, 1 a, b and c. intueor is also to highlight the visibility of the children’s ill-treatment and to demand that the audience inspect them: 10.4.3 and 5. explicantur crudelitatis adversus infelicem feminam adparatus et illa instrumenta virorum quoque animos ipso visu frangentia ad excutiendam muliebris pectoris conscientiam proponuntur; instat ante denuntiationibus quam tormentis tyrannus et minando torquet: tacet. videt intentum tyranni vultum, videt oculos minaces: [et] tacet … flagellis caeduntur artus, verberibus corpus abrumpitur exprimiturque ⟨sanguis⟩ ipsis vitalibus: tacet … fremebat indignatione captae civitatis maritus et consilio suo et uxoris adiutorio fortior. “quomodo occidam tyrannum? quae pars accedenti maxime vacat? ubi custodiae cessant? ubi natura loci minore munimento virtutem non summovet?” (2.5.4).

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The scene opens with a close up on the instruments of torture before moving out to picture interaction between the tyrant and the femina, during which he personally abuses and threatens her. The sense of physical proximity between the two is underlined when Arellius shows us the expression on the tyrant’s face (intentum vultum), and then actually in his eyes (oculos minaces) from the woman’s perspective. This intimate scene is then contextualised by the husband’s questions, which focus on how the tyrant’s residence is to be penetrated.84 We are given the sense of an enclosed, secretive space in which the tyrant operates.85 This carries across into the rhetoric of other declaimers who describe the location in which the woman is tortured as the tyrant’s stronghold (arx: 2.5.2 and 2.5.6).86 The torture of the loyal wife is a private affair and the only audience is the tyrant and his minions; this shuts out the possibility of any witnesses to her pain other than the audience who hear about it at considerable distance.87 Thus the tyrant’s torture chamber simultaneously spares the woman the indignity of a public audience and, because she can leave the space where pain was inflicted, acts to signal a limit to her physical suffering.88 This is respectful treatment for a respectable woman in terms of the declaimers’ descriptions, but also an indication that they do not need to evoke the woman’s pain so vividly, because there is not the same empathetic ‘gap’ between audience and victim; the signals of the story are heard and understood without the kind of elaboration used to depict the children. 84 85 86

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There is perhaps an intentional irony here in that the husband spends his time working out how to penetrate the tyrant, rather than his wife. Dunkle (1971), 17 notes that the seclusion of the tyrant is a standard feature of rhetorical depictions. In the former case Cestius Pius describes the woman being “dragged to the citadel” for her interrogation: rapitur in arcem mulier. In the latter case, Papirius Fabianus depicts her undignified and violent exit from the interrogation: … non dimissa est ex arce sed proiecta. Cestius Pius plays with her isolation when he contrasts the absens vir with the praesens tyrannus (2.5.3). See Ballengee (2009) on the importance of the internal audience in characterising narratives of torture. The display of the loyal wife’s body is not explicitly mentioned, it can only be assumed via the need to reveal her skin in order to inflict tortures. Public nudity for women was dishonourable (“the marker of the lowest whore”: Olson 2006, 195). Exposure of the body, particularly those parts usually covered, is also cited as a key component in the dehumanisation of Jewish women in the Holocaust by Nicole Ephgrave (2016), 20–23. While we are obviously dealing here with a very different social and cultural context, the modest dress that identified a married woman at Rome and the tradition that no one outside the familia should touch a matrona (e.g. V. Max. 2.1.5a) provide a jarring contrast to the way in which the body of the loyal wife is handled in 2.5. Note that the ‘manhandling’ of the woman is listed amongst the torments she has suffered: 2.5.3: rapitur in arcem mulier, inter satellitum manus vexatur atque distrahitur.

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2.3 Line of Sight The final significant distinction between the representation of pain in 10.4 and 2.5 lies in the way that the suffering of victims is focalised. The very first excerpt that Seneca includes at 10.4.1 from Porcius Latro barely deals with the injuries the exposed children have sustained; instead, it is closely concerned with the effects of these injuries on the relationship between parent and child. The first injured parties we encounter are the fathers (laesi patres) who fail even to recognise their own children (suos liberos). Latro expands on the idea of the recognition of children: That wicked man managed it so that, by a brand-new custom, nothing was more wretched for the exposed children than to be reared, nothing more wretched for the parents than to be recognised.89 Pity is bestowed on both parents and children; the parents have been injured (laesi) and the children inspire pity amongst their community (misericors). The balanced misery of parents and children is conveyed in two accusative and infinitive phrases dependent on the same claim that nothing is more miserable than their potential experience of finding one another at last. This idea is confirmed by Cornelius Hispanus who regrets that the reluctance of parents to recognise their children in this group will benefit the defendant (10.4.5). In the hands of Clodius Turrinus, Mento, Gavius Silo and Fulvius Sparsus, another facet of horror catches the light as the speakers play with the image of these children unknowingly seeking alms from their own parents and the equally distressing thoughts that the parents might have either withheld from, or donated alms to, their own child (10.4.6; 10.4.7 and 10.4.10). Sparsus brings this to life with particular pathos as he pictures hypothetical parents wondering aloud if the suffering beggars they encounter could be their own children.90 Once again the speakers underline the pitiable condition of both parent and child; once more with particular flare Sparsus exclaims “Oh wretched boys who beg thus; more wretched those who are asked thus!” (10.4.10).91 The situation is so grim 89

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Here Latro is possibly playing with the conventions of Roman comedy around the sudden recognition and reconciliation between parents and children separated by abduction, natural disaster etc. nescioquis: meus, inquit, filius, si viveret, huic fortassis similis esset. numquid ego meum transeo? alius: potuit, inquit, meus in eundem incidere dominum. quid si incidit? O miseros qui sic rogant, miseriores qui sic rogantur! At 10.4.6 Clodius Turrinus describes the parents as being miseri should they give or deny alms and the children as miseri as a result of their condition. Mento describes the children as miseri at 10.4.7, as does Gaius Silo—in both cases the speakers are imagining the children begging in the vicinity of their

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that Albucius Silus suggests that the biological parents of the children would have preferred them to have died than to have suffered this life (10.4.3). More optimistically, Gallio imagines that—having seen the children and witnessed their pain—men will no longer expose their sons (10.4.15). The parents of the expositi also feature in the arguments against the idea that the educator’s actions constitute an injury to the state. Here the argument rests on the idea that the educator has inflicted less pain on the children than their own parents, as Arellius Fuscus puts it: “the parents hurt the children more”.92 The same idea is raised in Latro’s devastatingly clear-sighted analysis of the case, in which he suggests as a counter-argument for the defendant that the real injury to the state was enacted by “the parents who cast these children out.”93 The focus on the parents of the exposed children is interesting on two levels: firstly, because it cleverly provides a means of communicating the psychological pain and distress of the children’s condition, and secondly because it is—on the traditional model of thinking about the exposure of children in the Roman world—wholly unexpected. An excerpt from Clodius Turrinus’ speech on this controversia captures the traditional idea nicely: “Some are born” he says “with some part of their body immediately broken, weak and giving no hope, whose parents chuck them out, rather than expose them! Some also cast out baby home-bred slaves or those born with an unlucky omen or disabled in their body.”94 The exposure of children is generally seen as “a widely accepted” part of Roman legal and familial practice.95 Children could be exposed for all the reasons mentioned by Clodius Turrinus, or simply because the parents/parent did not want to, or were not able to, raise the child.96 While it is likely that many exposed

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biological parents’ houses. Cassius Severus imagines the irony of a man giving alms to a beggar and thinking of the child’s infelix pater when the beggar is in fact his own child (10.4.25). Adaeus the Rhetorician, Blandus, Moschus and Arellius Fuscus also use similar hypotheticals with the figure of a grieving mother (described with misera) as a focalisation point for the horror of the children’s fate (10.4.19–20). 10.4.10: plus illis patres nocuerant. 10.4.12: non a me, inquit, sed a parentibus qui proiecerunt. 10.4.16: nascuntur, inquit, quidam statim aliqua corporis parte mulcati, infirmi et in nullam spem idonei, quos parentes sui proiciunt magis quam exponunt; aliqui etiam vernulas aut omine infausto editos aut corpore invalidos abiciunt. Harris (1994), 1. Also Evans Grubbs (2013), 83. Evans Grubbs (2013), 85 argues that the evidence suggests exposure was particularly likely in the absence of a father.

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babies did die as a result, some did survive because they were picked up and raised,97 and in the majority of cases, these children would become slaves.98 This speaks to the effective ‘non-status’ of the expositi—babies abandoned to the elements, or the kindness of strangers, had few rights. Treading carefully, because we are in the liminal terrain of controversia-land, this point is strongly made by the authors who speak against the charge of injury to the state.99 Latro has the defendant argue that by maiming the children he is simply making changes to his own property, as is his legal right (10.4.12). Alternatively, Gallio contests that exposed children technically are not part of the state and, therefore, no injury to them can constitute an injury to the state (10.4.14). These arguments appear to represent a deliberate choice on the part of the speakers to ignore one important point of Roman law as regards expositi: an exposed child who had been enslaved, and who could be shown to be the child of free parents, was legally free.100 Given the depiction of the biological parents as having their own houses and having disposable income for alms, the declaimers presumably envision the parents as free and yet they do not choose to argue using the disturbing and emotive possibility that legally free, freeborn children were being mutilated in appallingly painful ways.101 Instead, they focus entirely on the potential psychological pain of the emotional connection between parent and child, using the intimacy of this bond to create as much pity as possible for the children and their families, while retaining the sense that expositi have no claim to free status, and thus no claim to any relationships other than with their master.102 The orators have chosen to ignore the

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Harris (1994), 10. Evans Grubbs (2013), 93 notes that the legal problems arising from the survival of exposed children may inflate the impression of the possibility of survival in our sources. Evans Grubbs (2013), 93; Harris (1994), 9. Though note Harris (1994), 10 on the necessity for declamatory speeches to “be at least near to reality”. Evans Grubbs (2013), 96; though Evans Grubbs’ caveats regarding the difficulties of this process for slaves are important. This argument would require the speaker to discuss proofs of freedom, perhaps a less ‘sexy’ alternative for the context of declamation. Assumptions regarding the status of the parents can also be seen in possible futures imagined for their children: “What if one of these children might be a brave man one day? What if he might be a tyrannicide? What if he might be a priest?” (10.4.3); see also 10.4.11 for the natural counterargument. While we do have records of some later contact between parents and their exposed children, this is likely to have been unusual: Harris (1994), 10. Harris argues that we should read many of the reconciliations and ‘happy endings’ around exposed children as evidence of wishful thinking, prompted by feelings of guilt (ibid., 15). On the other hand, Evans Grubbs (2013), 87 does refer to at least one later legal case where the educator appears to have been

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presumed citizen status of the children which does exist by law and exploit the relationship between parent and child where that relationship technically does not exist in law. The explanation appears to be fundamentally about emotion and the role of relationships in the perception of pain. I would argue that we see here a means of connecting the audience more closely with the pain of the expositi by focalising their physical distress and humiliation through the eyes of their parents to show us their pitiable state as clearly as possible. The evocation of pity is clearly a central concern for the orators who argue that the mutilation of the children constitutes an injury to the state. As previously mentioned, the adjective miser is frequently applied to the children and their parents.103 Misericordia is also invoked as a concept regularly, and individuals are characterised (ironically or genuinely) as misericors.104 Fifteen of the twenty-five sections of the text feature a pity word—some as many as seven (10.4.6)—this controversia is dripping with demands for the audience to pity the pain of the children.105 Aristotle includes a discussion of the operation of pity in the Rhetoric: Let pity then be a kind of pain (λύπη) excited by the sight of evil, deadly or painful (λυπήρος), which befalls one who does not deserve it; an evil which one might expect to come upon himself or one of his friends, and when it seems nearby. For it is evident that one who is likely to feel pity must be such as to think that he, or one of his friends, is liable to suffer some evil, and such an evil as has been stated in the definition, or one similar, or nearly similar.106 Given that it is clear that the declaimers want to create pity, and that, according to D.S. Levene, it is the philosophical model that most closely matches Roman ideas of pity in the surviving literature, this definition is a useful lens for our analysis.107 The first condition Aristotle assigns is victims of an undeserving nature but the speakers do not choose to highlight the innocence of the expos-

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aware of the identity of the exposed child’s father and to have facilitated reconnection. The reconciliation of biological parent and exposed child is also the topic of Seneca’s Controv. 9.3, see Bernstein (2009) for discussion. 10.4.1, 2, 6 (four uses), 7 (three uses), 10 (three uses), 15, 19, 20 (three uses), 22, 24. misericordia: 10.4.3, 6, 9 (two uses), 16; misericors: 10.4.1, 5, 17. misereor also features: 10.4.6, 18. Webb (1997), 120 points to a particular link between the use of enargeia and the evocation of pity. Arist. Rh. 2.8.2 (translated by J.H. Freese). Levene (1997), 130.

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iti or to make much of their youth—diminutives are lacking from the texts, and vocabulary associated with childhood is limited. More interesting for our purposes is Aristotle’s second point of clarification as regards the motivation of pity: “an evil which one might expect to come upon himself or one of his friends”. Under this understanding, pity is primarily about the one who feels the pity, not the object of that pity; this means that the subject (the individual who feels pity) must recognise a commonality with the object (the individual who is pitied) particularly as regards their shared vulnerability.108 Levene has argued in the context of drama that, given a self-referential understanding of pity, ancient authors would often use another character in the play as a means of focalising audience pity if the audience “might not automatically respond” to the actual victim.109 In Controv. 10.4 the declaimers face the problem that those who attended exhibitions of declamation were at little risk of being exposed, maimed and made into beggars themselves. Certainly, we could argue that elite males experienced a sufficient chance of disability to feel some shared risk when it came to mutilation,110 but the degree of physical and legal vulnerability and humiliation suffered by the expositi was something quite alien to the experience of this audience. It is here, I would suggest, that the role of the parents becomes so critical. The speakers are able to focalise the pain of the children through the distress of the parents. It might be beyond the bounds of imagination to picture oneself as a deliberately lamed, enslaved beggar, but it is possible to imagine the distress one might feel when seeing one’s child experience so much pain.111 The use of this technique would explain why the parents, who have legally rejected these children as part of their familia, have so much prominence in the speeches. While the technically free condition of the children could also be used to suggest common ground between the audience and the victims, the group membership created in that way is more complex and distant than a

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Nehamas (1994), 270 describes this manifestation of pity as “self-regarding”. In 1941 Edward B. Stevens recognised a similar dynamic at work in Roman literature: Stevens (1941), 427 and 433. See too Nussbaum (1994), 86–91. Levene (1997), 132. Bernstein (2012), 165 emphasises the elite and masculine context for declamation. Robert Garland makes the point that many members of Greek and Roman society would have experienced significant physical impairment simply as a result of age: Garland (1995), 26. Military service was also a likely source of disability for elite males (ibid., 22–23). See also Jane Draycott on the probability of frequent sight impairment: Draycott (2015), 200. Modern studies note that the experience of watching their children in pain can have prolonged traumatic consequences for parents: Sobol-Kwapińska, Sobol & Woźnica-Niesobska (2020) 558–559.

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familial bond.112 The acute pity and psychological pain of the parents, on the other hand, allows the audience to access the physical and psychological pain of the expositi in an empathetic sense and to draw out a common distress for the physical injuries of the children: in this way a narrative is created that allows the audience to access a community of feeling and resonate with the children’s pain. The focalisation of pain in the case of the loyal wife at 2.5 is quite different: the first two excerpts are representative. Porcius Latro has the woman speak for herself, emphasising her agency and strength (2.5.1), while Cestius Pius opens and closes with a general view of the times, contextualising the events in wider societal fear (2.5.2–3) and throwing in a fairly dark joke at the husband’s expense (2.5.2). The declaimers choose not to use someone close to the woman as a point of emotional access and the wider tragedy of a state under tyranny clouds the focus on one individual’s pain. In fact, as Robert Mills notes, imagery of pain can be used not only to create empathy, but also to cut off the possibility of identification with the victim.113 The audience members in 2.5 are spoken of as dispassionate observers, as at Cestius Pius’ rhetorical question: ‘Would anyone be surprised that this woman didn’t give birth, even if she wasn’t tortured?’ (2.5.2).114 We are asked to be assessors of the damage as it speaks to the broader political context, not to feel it with the victim. The experience of the loyal wife is overwhelmingly compared not to the experience of men under the tyranny, but to other women.115 This often takes the form of comparing the woman’s experience as a childless wife to that of women who had given birth under the tyranny; her ‘good fortune’ ( fortuna) not to have delivered hostages to fortune is asserted (2.5.2, 4) and she is also compared to the kind of luxury loving woman who would have quickly informed on her husband given the chance (2.5.7). The declaimers thus do not ask a male audience to empathise directly with the loyal wife, and they do not ask their audience to imagine being tortured themselves.116 In fact, the only comments along these lines deliberately

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As noted previously, the mutilation of the children—who are largely depicted as male— adds to this complexity. Mills (2005), 106. hanc aliquis, etiam si non torqueatur, non parere miretur? The one exception comes from Arellius Fuscus who comments that the instruments of torture arrayed before the woman “break the spirits of men with their very appearance” (… illa instrumenta virorum quoque animos ipso visu frangentia … 2.5.4). Cf. the previously mentioned emphasis in 10.5 on the status, gender and age of the old Olynthian; amongst many examples: the unlucky old man saw the ruins of his shattered homeland tumbling down; he was ripped away from his wife, ripped away from his children, he stood on the ash of scorched Olynthus; now he is miserable enough to repres-

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contrast male and female experiences of torture. Arellius Fuscus comments that the woman resisted tortures that break men by their very appearance, and Cornelius Hispanus suggests that the terrible torture she experienced had the effect of discouraging her husband from an act of tyrannicide, rather than spurring him on to action: the loyal wife is actually elevated beyond her husband in terms of her endurance and strength (2.5.4 and 2.5.5).117 She is, simultaneously, effortlessly empathetic via her elite group membership, and slightly depersonalised in the focus on the broader political state. The declaimers also choose not to focalise the woman’s pain through a male relative such as a father or brother. Of course, the most logical male to let us into the closed loop of the woman’s pain is her husband, and it is not in his interests as a defendant on a charge of ingratitude to draw attention to her physical distress.118 The only references to the husband’s response to his wife’s torture come in the form of cool assertions of contracts fulfilled: she was tortured, he avenged her by killing the man who ordered it, the debts are fully acquitted on both sides and there is no issue of ingratitude to be discussed.119 In the treatment of this controversia, then, the declaimers do not describe the woman’s injuries as vividly as those inflicted on the children, the tools used to hurt her are positioned between the listeners and her body, her pain is a private, transitory affair, and the declaimers do not create (and labour) an emotional link via which the audience can connect to her experience. The woman’s narrative of pain is far less elaborate than that created for the children because the declaimers know that the persona of the victim is far more familiar to their audience and her story—by its very nature—is public, political property. I noted earlier that under Aristotle’s theory of pity, the sensation of pity rests on a belief that the pitiable fate could befall oneself—in short, the subject must feel that they share key vulnerabilities with the object. Cicero, in De Oratore, picks up this idea and explains that the audience needs to be made to see their own problems and pain in the experience of the orator’s client (2.211).120 As

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ent Prometheus: infelix senex vidit iacentis divulsae patriae ruinas; abstractus a coniuge, abstractus a liberis, super exustae Olynthi cinerem stetit; iam ad figurandum Promethea satis tristis est (10.5.1). In contrast Robert Mills demonstrates a network of points of focalisation that allow male viewers to see their own experience in depictions of the martyrdom of women in medieval art: Mills (2005), 128. Scarry (1985), 59 refers to the “looped circles” of pain that prevent an observer from experiencing the pain of the victim. See one version of the controversia argued by Latro at 2.5.12 and Cestius at 2.5.18. Quintilian points to the very limited impact on listeners of someone else’s troubles (aliena mala) and the need to capitalise quickly on any signs of sympathy (Inst. 6.1.29).

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noted at the outset, these social and cultural limits on pity in response to pain do not end with the Ancient World. Modern neurological studies on empathy have identified similar patterns in the scientific data: for example, stronger empathy related activity in the brain can be measured if the observer sees the pain of a person who is part of their own ‘in-group’.121 Terrifyingly, this was demonstrated when a 2015 study of American medical students and residents found that 50% of the white students and residents believed that black people had thicker skin than white people and felt less pain.122 Likewise, in Seneca’s Controversiae, we appear to see evidence, via the featured declaimer’s choices, that audience empathy for the pain of individuals is moderated by a number of factors. An effective evocation of pain is aided by concrete, explicit descriptions of injuries that render them as vividly as possible, and by stressing the role of human hands in deliberately inflicting those injuries on another body. Similarly, empathy for pain can be evoked by the victim’s vulnerability, not just at the moment of injury, but in an ongoing sense. Hence the focus on mutilation that leaves the children permanently and visibly in pain both in body and mind. Humiliation is a key part of this nexus: the ongoing visibility of pain and vulnerability creates additional pain for the victim that is less acute when their original suffering—as in the case of the tortured wife—is behind closed doors. All these techniques may be fruitless, however, if the audience does not feel a degree of connection with the victim and is unable to see the victim’s pain in terms of their own concerns, be that on a directly personal level, or the imagined experience of a parent confronted with their broken child. The declaimers need to create a community of feeling which connects their audience with the victim’s suffering; the more distant audience and victim are in real terms of status and experience, the more elaborate the rhetoric will need to be to evoke the listener’s empathy. The techniques we can see the orators using in these declamations reveal that pity, and empathy, are remarkably self-centred responses to pain: they are essentially about what the audience can imagine happening to themselves, rather than what happens to other people.123 The narratives used to describe the pain of others in Seneca’s collection reflect the need to carefully tailor a description of physical experience to the concerns of the listener if they are going to feel the victim’s pain. Rhetorically speaking, the depiction of pain in Seneca’s text is intensely subjective, tailored to draw on the audience’s views of 121 122 123

Singer and Klimecki (2014), R876. Hoffman, Trawalter, Axt, & Oliver (2016), 4296–301. Breithaupt (2019), 159–160, categorises this self-reflective response as ‘false empathy’.

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certain kinds of injury and—most of all—certain kinds of victim to ensure the greatest possible impact for the speakers; it is far more about creating a rhetorical sensation by evoking a community of feeling in the audience, than it is an objective record of physical sensations.

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chapter 5

Is Pain Natural? A Study of Stoic Philosophy Jean-Christophe Courtil

1

Introduction

Physical pain, as a normal sensory reaction of our organism, is a physiological phenomenon that is part of human nature. However, suffering disturbs physical and mental harmony that naturally reigns in humans, thus compromising the ‘absence of disturbance’ promised by Hellenistic philosophy, whether it was called ἀπάθεια, ἀταραξία, securitas or tranquillitas animi. Experience of physical pain is likely to undermine the promise of philosophy to secure man’s happiness in all circumstances. It is in this sense that pain may seem unnatural, since it goes against the natural balance of humans. This ambivalence can already be found in Stoic thought, especially in Seneca the Younger,1 who gave a fundamental place to pain throughout his work. While the philosopher often claims that pain is unnatural, he also explains that a human being is subjected to it by nature. How might we explain this paradox? Unwilling to consider that there is a contradiction within such an elaborate system as that of the Senecan philosophy, one can formulate two hypotheses. 1. Either there are different types of pain, some are natural, others not. This would simply mean distinguishing between the pain imposed by nature, such as the sufferings of illness, from pain which is a direct consequence of human behaviour and choices, such as the sufferings of asceticism. This is what one finds, for example, in Cynic philosophy that differentiates between pains in accordance with nature, and unnatural pains, which result from pursuing pleasures. 2. Or, the words ‘pain’ and ‘nature’ do not always have the same meaning according to the context in which they appear. Indeed, both the terms dolor and natura2 are polysemous in Latin and this polysemy exposes the modern reader to possible simplifications. There is only one word in Latin, dolor, to cover the semantic areas of several Greek terms: ἄλγος and its 1 On pain in Seneca’s works, see Armisen-Marchetti (2010); Courtil (2014); Courtil (2015); Courtil (2018); Malaspina (2015). 2 On the concept of natura and its polysemy, see Courrént (1999); Lévy (1996). On natura in the Stoics, see Lévy (1999); Rosenmeyer (2000); Striker (1991).

© Jean-Christophe Courtil, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004677463_006

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derivatives, λύπη, ὀδύνη, πάθος and πόνος. As for the term natura, like its Greek equivalent φύσις, it refers not only to all things that exist, but also to the configuration common to the whole of a category (e.g., the nature of men), or the divine will that organises the world, that is, Providence, God. I will attempt to demonstrate that the apparent paradox about the natural character of pain actually proceeds from the polysemy of these two terms, a polysemy that, once clarified, allows access to the complex relationship between the different phases of pain and nature in the Stoic system.

2

Pain and Nature

2.1 Pain Is Natural … Physical pain is a physiological phenomenon, reflecting the good functioning of the body, its ability to warn against what could be detrimental to its integrity, so much that the inability to feel pain, congenital analgesia, constitutes a very serious disease that threatens the survival of the organism.3 The sensation of pain, such as hunger, thirst, cold or heat, is intrinsically linked to the human condition, its fragility, and its finitude.4 It is therefore impossible to avoid it. This universality of the painful sensation in all living beings is a very widespread idea in ancient thought, which makes sensation the distinguishing criterion between what is animal and what is non-animal.5 This idea is particularly important among the Stoics who strongly affirm the existence of sensation and its paramount importance in access to knowledge. The philosophers of the Stoa demonstrate the universality of pain by an a fortiori argument: even the wise man, who represents the ultimate degree of human perfection, the ideal of the one who reached the absolute autarkeia, that is to say the greatest possible autonomy from external elements, knows the sensation of physical pain: Ne extra rerum naturam uagari uirtus nostra uideatur, et tremet sapiens et dolebit et expallescet; hi enim omnes corporis sensus sunt.

3 On the dangers of congenital analgesia, see, inter alia: Woolf (2007). 4 For these states as destructive of normal physiological condition: Sen. Ep. 67.1: nec calidum nec frigidum pati; 91.18: Et doleas oportet et sitias et esurias …; Troa. 583: doloris artes et famem et saeuam sitim. 5 On this issue, see Fortenbaugh (1971).

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You must not think that our human virtue transcends nature; the wise man will tremble, will feel pain, will turn pale. For all these are sensations of the body. (Sen. Ep. 71.29)6 The wise man is no less a man and he cannot extract himself from natural laws related to his status as a human being. It is natural for a human to feel sensations, and not even the wise man can rise above these laws because, although he might achieve human perfection, he is not God. Seneca here rejects the traditional accusation of insensitivity addressed to the Stoic school, categorically asserting that the wise man feels pain: “Istum tu dices nec dolere?” Iste uero dolet (sensum enim hominis nulla exuit uirtus), sed non timet: inuictus ex alto dolores suos spectat. “Shall you say that he has felt no pain either?” Yes, he has felt pain; for no human virtue can rid itself of feelings. But he has no fear; unconquered he looks down from a lofty height upon his sufferings. (Sen. Ep. 85.29) Indeed, Seneca distinguishes between the notions of ‘absence of sensation’ and ‘absence of disturbance’. If the wise man feels the sensation of pain (iste uero dolet), the philosopher adds however, that he has no fear of it (non timet). For virtue does not lead to absence of sensation, that is to the fact of not feeling pain, which is not allowed by Nature, but leads to absence of disturbance, to the fact of remaining unconquered (inuictus) by pain, of not letting pain disturb the soul.7 Thus, the Stoic ἀπάθεια is not that of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, which, Cicero tells us, means absolute insensitivity and constitutes a negation of the very sensation of pain.8 Indeed, since the old Stoa, the ἀπάθεια has never been intended 6 All quotations from ancient texts and their translation, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Loeb Classical Library. 7 Cf. Sen. Constant. 10.4: Haec non nego sentire sapientem […] sed receptos euincit (“I do not deny that the wise man feels these things […] but those that he receives he overcomes”); Sen. Prov. 2.2: Nec hoc dico, non sentit illa, sed uincit (“And yet I do not mean to say that the brave man is insensible to these, but that he overcomes them”); Sen. Ep. 9.3: … noster sapiens uincit quidem incommodum omne sed sentit (“… our wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them”). 8 Cic. Acad. ii.42.130: Pyrrho autem ea ne sentire quidem sapientem, quae ἀπάθεια nominatur (“Pyrrho on the other hand held that the wise man does not even perceive these things with his senses—the name for this unconsciousness is apatheia”). Cf. D.L. 9.61–62; 66–67. On this insensitivity, see Rodis-Lewis (1975), 272; Prost (2004), 229–232. On the opposition between Pyrrhonians and Stoics, see Lévy (1999).

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as a negation of physical pain. Like Seneca, Chrysippus asserts that the wise man feels pain, but that he is not disturbed by pain, namely that he feels the sensation of pain, but that the latter will not disturb the wise man’s soul: Ἔλεγεν δὲ ὁ Χρύσιππος ἀλγεῖν μὲν τὸν σοφόν, μὴ βασανίζεσθαι δέ˙ μὴ γὰρ ἐνδιδόναι τῇ ψυχῇ (“Chrysippus said that the wise man feels pain, but he is not disturbed for pain does not take place in his soul.” SVF iii.574 [= Stob. Flor. 7.21], my translation). For the Stoics, the human condition necessarily involves feeling pain, which is in this sense natural. 2.2 … and Unnatural Yet, even though pain is physiological, physical pain is not part of the normal state of the body. In its natural state, without pathology or aggression, the body is not supposed to suffer. From this point of view, it is freedom from pain, dolorum uacatio or indolentia,9 the Senecan translations of the Stoic notion of ἀπονία,10 which seems natural: … dolorum uacatio […] petam […] non quia bona sunt, sed quia secundum naturam sunt … (“I shall seek freedom from pains […] not because they are goods, but because they are according to nature …”, Sen. Ep. 92.11).11 The Stoics agree with the Epicurean12 and Academic13 philosophers on this point, maintaining that the absence of pain is more in accordance with human nature than its presence. For Epicurus, the absence of all pain is even the greatest pleasure and therefore the state which is more in accordance with human nature.14 On the contrary, Seneca says that physical pain is unnatural: Vulnerari enim et subiecto igne tabescere et aduersa ualetudine affligi contra naturam est … (“For being wounded, wasting away over a fire, being afflicted with bad health, such things are contrary to nature …”, Sen. Ep. 66.38). In order to explain this point, the philosopher brings into opposition two states of human soul, gaudium and dolor, the first one is naturalis, the second is contra naturam:

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Dolorum uacatio: Sen. Ep. 92.11; indolentia: Sen. Ep. 66.45; 87.19. See e.g. SVF iii.138 (= Plut. De Stoic. repugn. 30.1047e). Translation from Grummere. Lucr. 2.16–19: nonne uidere / nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi utqui / corpore seiunctus dolor absit … (“not to see that all nature barks for is this, that by some means pain be removed away out of the body …”). Cic. Fin. v.25.73: Positum est a nostris in iis esse rebus, quae secundum naturam essent, non dolere (“Our school included freedom from pain among the things in accordance with nature”). Cic. Fin. i.11.37.

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“Nihil interest inter gaudium et dolorum inflexibilem patientiam?” […] in altero enim naturalis est animi remissio ac laxitas, in altero contra naturam dolor. “Is there no difference between joy and unyielding endurance of pain?” […] In the one case, there is a natural relaxation and loosening of the soul; in the other there is an unnatural pain. (Sen. Ep. 66.14) As can be observed, Seneca avoids speaking of pain and pleasure at the same time although the two are traditionally linked. By not mentioning that pleasure is natural, Seneca maintains that it is not physical pleasure that is natural, but the joyful state of the virtuous soul. In pain, the soul is not peaceful and is not in its natural tranquillity, but in an unnatural distress which is equal to passion, called λύπη by the Greek Stoics.15 2.2.1 Axiological Status of Dolor For an Academic philosopher such as Cicero, influenced by Platonism, to say that pain is unnatural means the same as to assert that it is evil. For him, this is precisely what defines evil, whereas good is natural.16 This is not the case for the Stoics, for whom nonconformity to nature is not a sufficient criterion to define evil. To assert that pain is not an evil provoked a lot of criticism from the anti-Stoics. Cicero echoed these criticisms and often repeats that the Stoics admit that pain is unnatural, but that they do not want to admit that it is evil. For him, this is a posture. In fact, the problem lies in the definition of evil:17 for the Stoics, only vice is evil so even though pain is contrary to nature, it is no vice and, therefore, it is no evil. Cicero and Seneca both agree that pain is contrary to nature, but they do not draw the same ethical conclusion from it. For the Stoa, physical dolor comes under moral indifferents, that is they are neither good (since the only real good is virtue) nor evil (since the only real evil is vice) in themselves. But if physical dolor falls under moral indifferents, to have a body free from pain is not a genuine indifferent such as, to

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Cic. Tusc. 3.25.61 (= SVF iii.485): Ex quo ipsam aegritudinem λύπην Chrysippus, quasi solutionem totius hominis, appellatam putat (“That is why, for Chrysippus, pain is called λύπη, because it brings the whole man to dissolution (from λύω)”, my transl.). Cf. Cic. Fin. v.29.89: Bonum appello quicquid secundum naturam est, quod contra malum. (“I call good everything that conforms, and evil everything that is contrary to nature”, my transl.). See Cic. Fin. iv.26.72.

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use Chrysippus’ image, “the fact that the number of hairs on one’s head is odd or even”:18 it is not a neutral indifferent. Indeed, according to the Stoic theory, there are things which are not completely indifferent, but “preferred” or “non-preferred”:19 it is Zeno himself who seems to have introduced this theory in order to claim the self-sufficiency of virtue without actually claiming that everything is completely morally indifferent. The Greek terms introduced by Zeno to refer to “preferred” and “non-preferred” indifferents are respectively προηγμένα and ἀποπροηγμένα, which Seneca translates by commoda (“the advantages”) and incommoda (“the disadvantages”).20 According to the Stoic doctrine, for Seneca, several times, dolorum uacatio falls under the category of commoda and dolor under the incommoda. Seneca gives two definitions of commoda. The first one, which he takes from Posidonius,21 emphasises the usefulness (usus) of “the advantages”; it is that “which contains more of usefulness than of annoyance”: Commodum est quod plus usus habet quam molestiae; bonum sincerum esse debet et ab omni parte innoxium. Non est id bonum quod plus prodest, sed quod tantum prodest. An advantage is that which contains more of usefulness than of annoyance. But a good ought to be a genuine good and with no element in it of harmfulness. A thing is not good if it contains more benefit than injury, but only if it contains nothing but benefit. (Sen. Ep. 87.36) Unlike the good which is of an absolute usefulness (tantum), the advantage is of a relative usefulness (quod plus prodest). This usefulness is actually measured 18 19

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SVF iii.118 (= Stob. Ecl. ii.79.1): … τινα καθάπαξ ἀδιάφορα εἶναι, οἷον τὸ ἀρτίας ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς τρίχας ἢ περιττάς …; iii.121 (= Stob. Ecl. ii.82.5). See SVF iii.122 (= Sext. Emp. Math. 11.62): Ἤδη δὲ τῶν ἀδιαφόρων φασὶ τὰ μὲν εἶναι προηγμένα τὰ δ’ ἀποπροηγμένα τὰ δὲ μήτε προηγμένα μήτε ἀποπροηγμένα˙ (“And they say too that of things indifferent some are ‘preferred’, others ‘rejected’, others neither preferred nor rejected.”); 127 (= Diog. Laert. vii.106); 133 (= Stob. Ecl. ii.80. 14); Cic. Fin. iii.15.50: … eorum alia aestimabilia, alia contra, alia neutrum. (“some of them of positive and others of negative value, and others neutral”); Prost (2004), 198. Cf. Ep. 92.16: Commoda sunt in uita et incommoda, utraque extra nos. Si non est miser uir bonus, quamuis omnibus prematur incommodis, quomodo non est beatissimus, si aliquibus commodis deficitur? (“There are in life things which are advantageous and disadvantageous—both beyond our control. If a good man, in spite of being weighed down by all kinds of disadvantages, is not wretched, how is he not supremely happy, no matter if he does lack certain advantages?”). = fr. 170 (Edelstein-Kidd).

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by the circumstances that go along with it and by its ‘use’.22 For example, freedom from pain is desirable if it makes easier the path to wisdom, but if it is going to bring me to vice, then it no longer is. Its value is therefore an instrumental value, linked not to the object itself, otherwise it would not be an indifferent one, but to its role in the pursuit of good.23 On the contrary, the incommoda, in morally neutral circumstances (and this is usually the case), are not desirable (non incommoda optabilia sunt, Sen. Ep. 67.4). Pain makes the activity of philosophy more difficult, and, if it does not impede the fulfilment of virtue, it might hinder its action.24 The second definition of Seneca exposes the commoda as “desirable” circumstances (expetenda, Ben. v.13.2) for they are natural. The subdivision between ‘preferred’ and ‘non-preferred’ is thus established by considering whether they are in accordance with or contrary to nature: Sed hoc respondeo, plurimum interesse inter gaudium et dolorem; si quaeratur electio, alterum petam, alterum uitabo: illud secundum naturam est, hoc contra.25 But the reply which I do make, is that there is great difference between joy and pain; if I am asked to choose, I shall seek the former and avoid the latter. The former is according to nature, the latter contrary to it. (Sen. Ep. 16.19) ‘Preferred’ and ‘non-preferred’ indifferents are therefore the elements that our instinctive and natural impulse pursues (petam) or flees (uitabo) according to their conformity (secundam naturam) or not (contra) with nature. Freedom from pain is in accordance with human nature, while physical dolor goes 22 23

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On this ‘use’, see Prost (2004), 200; Benatouïl (2006). Sen. Ep. 92.11: “Quid ergo?” inquit “si uirtutem nihil inpeditura sit bona ualetudo et quies et dolorum uacatio, non petes illas?” (“‘What, then,’ comes the retort, ‘if good health, rest, and freedom from pain are not likely to hinder virtue, shall you not seek all these?’ ”). See Prost (2004), 208. Sen. Ep. 85.31: … dolor […] uirtutem enim illi non eripiet, sed opera eius inpediet (“For although [pain] will not rob him of his virtue, yet [it] will hinder the work of virtue”). Cf. Sen. Ep. 92.11: … non quia bona sunt, sed quia secundum naturam sunt … (“… not because they are goods, […] because they are according to nature …”); SVF iii.146 (= Plut. de comm. not. 4.1060c); Cic. Acad. i.10.36: Cetera autem etsi nec bona nec mala essent tamen alia secundum naturam dicebat alia naturae esse contraria … (“All other things, he said, were neither good nor bad, but nevertheless some of them were in accordance with nature and others contrary to nature …”); See Voelke (1973), 98; Prost (2004), 198.

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against it. The inborn revulsion that the latter triggers is therefore natural.26 We already find this idea in Early Stoicism, in Chrysippus: Ἔτι δὲ τῶν ἀδιαφόρων φασί τὰ μὲν εἶναι ὁρμῆς κινητικά, τὰ δὲ ἀφορμῆς […] Ὁρμῆς μὲν οὖν κινητικά, ἅπερ ἐλέγομεν εἶναι κατὰ φύσιν˙ ἀφορμῆς δὲ ὅσα παρὰ φύσιν˙27 [The Stoics] assert that among the indifferent things some can trigger an impulse, others a revulsion … We affirm that those that are consistent with nature trigger an impulse, but those that are not trigger a revulsion. (SVF iii.121 [= Stob. Ecl. ii.82.5], my translation) Pain is thus an indifferent from the moral point of view, but it is not an indifferent from the point of view of its conformity with nature. However, although the rule for a man is to “live according to nature” (secundum naturam uiuere, Sen. Ep. 5.4) in the Stoic system, this does not mean that one should systematically prefer freedom from pain to pain: Duo illa bona superiora diuersa sunt: prima enim secundum naturam sunt […]; secunda contra naturam sunt, fortiter obstare tormentis et sitim perpeti morbo urente praecordia. “Quid ergo? Aliquid contra naturam bonum est?” Minime; sed id aliquando contra naturam est in quo bonum illud exsistit. Vulnerari enim et subiecto igne tabescere et aduersa ualetudine affligi contra naturam est, sed inter ista seruare animum infatigabilem secundum naturam est. Et ut quod uolo exprimam breuiter, materia boni aliquando contra naturam est bonum numquam … The two kinds of goods which are of a higher order are different; the primary are according to nature […] The secondary are contrary to nature, —such as fortitude in resisting torture or in enduring thirst when illness makes the vitals feverish. “What then,” you say, “can anything that is contrary to nature be a good?” Of course not; but that in which this good takes its rise is sometimes contrary to nature. For being wounded, wasting away over a fire, being afflicted with bad health,—such things are contrary to nature; but it is in accordance with nature for a man to pre26

27

Cf. Sen. Ep. 123.13: … duo esse genera rerum quae nos aut inuitent aut fugent. […] fugat […] dolor … (“there are two classes of objects which either attract us or repel us. […] we are repelled by […] pain …”). Cf. SVF iii.119 (= Diog. Laert. vii.104).

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serve an indomitable soul amid such distresses. To explain my thought briefly, the material with which a good is concerned is sometimes contrary to nature, but a good itself never is contrary … (Sen. Ep. 66.37– 39) Pain is only the circumstance, the “matter” (materia) says Stoicism, on which virtue can be exercised. Conformity with the matter’s nature is to be taken into account only in the case of absolutely neutral moral circumstances.28 On the other hand, if it is about the exercise of virtue, it is not the conformity of the circumstantial substance (in quo bonum illud exsistit) that has to be taken into account, but that of the action. Thus, in an ordinary situation, freedom from pain, according to nature, would be better than pain. But if pain makes it possible to manifest virtue, in this case fortitude ( fortitudo), by definition in accordance with nature, pain falls into the preferred category. As written in the extract’s concluding sententia, it is therefore not the conformity with the dolor’s nature that characterises the virtuous action—since it is only the matter out of which the good can come (materia boni)—but that of the virtuous action itself (bonum). 2.2.2 The Primary Impulses of Nature in Man The unnatural nature of pain must therefore be linked to the primary impulses of ‘nature in man’. Indeed, since birth, humans and other animals have a natural desire to flee from physical pain. For Epicureans, the reason is that pain is evil, for Stoics, however, the reason lies in the fact that humans are instinctively drawn to what is appropriate to them (oikeion): this is the Stoic theory of oikeiosis.29 But what is peculiar to the ‘nature of man’, is to be stable in his being and in a state that would make the free exercise of the soul’s faculties possible. Therefore, since birth, mankind has been gifted with an inborn impulse, given by nature, that steers him to flee from physical pain, since it is the message from an endangered area of the body: Primum sibi ipsum conciliatur animal […] Voluptatem peto. Cui? mihi; ergo mei curam ago. Dolorem refugio. Pro quo? pro me; ergo mei curam ago.

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Epict. Diatrib. ii.5.1: Αἱ ὗλαι ἀδιάφοροι, ἡ δὲ χρῆσις αὐτῶν οὐκ ἀδιάφορος (“Materials are indifferent, but the use which we make of them is not a matter of indifference”). See Engberg-Pedersen (1986); Striker (2000).

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First of all, the living being is adapted to itself […] I seek pleasure; for whom? For myself. I am therefore looking out for myself. I shrink from pain; on behalf of whom? Myself. Therefore, I am looking out for myself. (Sen. Ep. 121.17) By using the free indirect speech to tell the Epicurean view, Seneca shows here that it is actually the “care of the self” ([su]i curam) and “self-preservation”, the conciliatio (the Latin translation of the Greek oikeiosis), that drives man to, first of all (primum), “seek pleasure” (uoluptatem petere) and “to shrink from pain” (dolorem refugire). Hence, the way in which mankind conceives pain originates in the first impulse which means that any relation with the outside is above all a primordial self-relation. Pain causes a movement of instinctive and reflexive rejection without the volition even having to intervene.30 Surprisingly, this idea seems to agree with the ‘Cradle Argument’ in Epicureanism in that the first instinct (τὴν πρώτην ὁρμήν) of living beings would tend towards pleasure (ἡδονή) and would flee from pain (πόνος), an argument rejected by the old Stoic tradition. Indeed, according to Chrysippus, the primary impulses of nature are prior to any knowledge of pleasure and pain: … τοῖς Χρυσίππου δόγμασιν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τῷ μηδεμίαν οἰκείωσιν εἶναι φύσει πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἢ ἀλλοτρίωσιν πρὸς πόνον (“… Chrysippus’ thesis that there is no natural affinity to pleasure or alienation from pain”, SVF iii.229a).31 For Chrysippus, when the child flees from what causes him pain, it is not the pain itself that he rejects, but something that is not in accordance with his nature, for the preservation of his being, exactly in the same way that every animal, from the very beginning, will flee from predators or avoid foods which do not suit his species. On the other hand, Posidonius, a Middle Stoic philosopher, opposes this idea which was developed in Early Stoicism by reaffirming the importance of the primary impulses of nature towards pleasure (οἰκείωσιν πρὸς ἡδονήν) and the inborn aversion to pain (ἀλλοτρίωσιν πρὸς πόνον): οὐ μὴν ἀκολουθεῖ γε ταῦτα τοῖς Χρυσίππου δόγμασιν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τῷ μηδεμίαν οἰκείωσιν εἶναι φύσει πρὸς ἡδονὴν ἢ ἀλλοτρίωσιν πρὸς πόνον. ᾄττει μὲν γὰρ ἀδιδάκτως ἅπαντα τὰ παιδία πρὸς τὰς ἡδονάς, ἀποστρέφεται δὲ καὶ φεύγει τοὺς πόνους.

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See Rey (1993), 6: “C’est l’instinct qui porte l’homme comme l’animal à repousser la douleur de toutes ses forces.”; Prost (2004), 229. = Gal. PHP v.5.3 (CMG v.4.1.2, 316.27–29 De Lacy). Translation from Kidd (1999).

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These facts certainly do not follow logically from Chrysippus’ doctrines, just as they don’t follow either from his view that there is no natural affinity to pleasure or alienation from pain. But all children rush untaught towards pleasures, avert themselves and flee from pains. (Fr. 169A Kidd and Edelstein).32 Although Seneca scrupulously respects the theory of οἰκείωσις as developed by Early Stoicism, the question of the inborn aversion to pain is therefore a point of disagreement with the Old Stoic doctrine. Like Posidonius, Seneca moves away from this theory in order to give back to physical pain its unnatural character, in a more realistic vision than the theory of the natural impulse towards virtue, defended by Chrysippus (SVF iii.42). 2.2.3 From the Instinct of Conservation to the Empowerment of Reason However, this theory of the inborn aversion to pain poses an ethical problem: why should we not systematically avoid physical pain, since it goes against our natural instinct that drives us, from our birth, to avoid it? This apparent contradiction between the indifferent value of the physical dolor and its unnatural character is dissipated thanks to Seneca’s definition of the constitutio. Indeed, a human’s constitutio is distinctive, because it is rational (constitutionem rationalem), that is to say that unlike other animals, his nature commands him to act according to his reason: … omne animal primum constitutioni suae conciliari, hominis autem constitutionem rationalem esse et ideo conciliari hominem sibi non tamquam animali sed tamquam rationali. … every living thing is at the start adapted to its constitution, but that man’s constitution is a reasoning one, and hence man is adapted to himself not merely as a living, but as a reasoning being. (Sen. Ep. 121.14 [= SVF iii.184]) As we have seen, reason tells us that physical pain is an indifferent. Contrary to what it may seem, this theory does not contradict the idea that a human being naturally flees from physical pain. Indeed, the adverb primum underlines the fact that it is a first phase of the impulse, which precedes reason, and during this phase, the preservation of physical integrity comes to the fore. Yet, according

32

= Gal. PHP v.5.3 (CMG v.4.1.2, 316.27–31 De Lacy). Translation from Kidd.

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to Seneca, the constitutio of a human undergoes an evolution, from childhood to adulthood, between this instinctual, pre-rational impulse and the impulse of reason, an idea which is already present in Chrysippus. Since children are not yet gifted with reason (rationalis nondum),33 it is obvious that for them the conciliatio applies to a non-reasoning constitutio. It is therefore by no means the evolution of a state where the conciliatio would be dominant, towards a state where it would give way to reason, but of a single and same constitutio that changes with age (alia atque alia): Sic, quamuis alia atque alia cuique constitutio sit, conciliatio constitutionis suae eadem est34 (“Thus, although each has at different times a different constitution, the adaptation of each to its constitution is the same”, Sen. Ep. 121.16). Initially focused on the preservation of the physical being, the primary impulse of nature then adapts to reason and seeks the preservation of the rational state of mind over the mere maintenance of life.35 When man becomes aware of his rational nature, the inborn desire for self-preservation (amor salutis suae, Ep. 121.20) gives way to the love of reason (ama rationem, Ep. 74.21). Man then perceives physical pain as a mere circumstance to the true object of the impulse: virtue. For Seneca, there is therefore a specificity in human oikeiosis: humans do not only comprehend objects to be sought or avoided depending on whether they are constantly useful or not to the preservation of their organism, but they differently arrange preferences according to circumstances, to their participation in moral action, which can drive them to make surprising choices, such as suffering, if it should allow them to be virtuous.36

3

Nature and the Different Phases of Pain

Thus, we find in Seneca’s works two seemingly contradictory ideas: on the one hand, that the sensation of pain is universal and natural, and on the other, that feeling pain is unnatural. This double characterisation can be explained by the polysemy of the term dolor that can mean, in Seneca’s thought, a sensation as 33

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See Posidon. fr. 159 (Kidd & Edelstein = Gal. PHP v.1 [5.431K]): … τοῖς παιδίοις, ὅτι δηλαδὴ καὶ ταῦτα οὐδέπω λογικά (“[Stoics do not agree that even children possess emotions], since they too are obviously not yet rational”); 169A (Kidd & Edelstein = Gal. PHP v.5 [5.459K]): … οὐ γὰρ ἔχουσιν ἤδη τὸν λόγον (“for children don’t yet have reason”). On this evolution, see Prost (2004), 118–220; Benatouïl (2006), 23. Cf. Cic. Fin. iii.6.22: … non inest in primis naturae conciliationibus honesta actio; consequens est enim et post oritur (“… moral action is not one of the primary natural attractions, but is an outgrowth of these, a later development”). Besnier (1999), 127.

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well as a pre-emotion or a passion.37 Indeed, despite the use of a single term in Latin, pain is an evolving phenomenon (as we have seen in the introduction) the status of which changes as it progresses. 3.1 Sensation and Pre-Emotion Are Natural Even if Seneca does not give a definition of the physical dolor, he uses, several times, the expressions of sensus doloris (“sensation of pain”)38 and sentire dolorem (“to feel pain”).39 For these occurrences, dolor therefore belongs to the category of “sensation” (sensus, gr. αἴσθησις): Non est autem nisi ex eo quod sentias dolor (“But there can be no pain except as the result of what you feel”, Sen. Ep. 74.34). The conjunction nisi expresses this necessary link between the dolor and the sensation (quod sentias), but it should also be noted that the preposition ex indicates the fact that the sensation is only the starting point, the origin of all painful phenomena. In accordance with the definition of sensation given by the ancient Stoics,40 pain is the “perception” (ἀντίληψις) of an external reality, in this case a danger to physical integrity, through the activation of the senses (δι’ αἰσθητηρίου), mainly touch.41 Like Seneca, Chrysippus speaks of “sensation of pain”: the Senecan sensus doloris thus appears as the Latin equivalent of the Chrysippean terminology αἴσθησις τοῦ ἀλγεῖν.42 However, Seneca deviates from this definition on one point: whereas for the ancient Stoics sensation can be accompanied by assent (συγκατάθεσις) and comprehension (κατάληψις), in Seneca’s thought, as we will see below, sensation is necessarily prior to it. For Seneca, as we have seen, the sensation of pain is inevitable and common to all living beings. Even the wise man (see Ep. 71.29, discussed on p. 100) experiences sensations (corporis sensus) that proceed from a physical movement which is out of his control and that hence cannot be avoided in any way by reflection. The sensation of pain is therefore inevitable, prior to reason, and thus natural. If the sensation is directly related to the body, its effects cannot be limited to it. For the Stoics, mind and body are intrinsically linked and interpenetrate each

37 38 39 40

41 42

On the three meanings of dolor, see TLL, vol. v 1. p. 1837. lin. 7 sqq. Ir. iii.19.5; Ep. 71.29; 78.8; 85.29; 124.2. Constant. 10.4; Ep. 74.34; 78.17; 121.7. SVF ii.850 (= Aëtius, Plac. iv.8.1): αἴσθησίς ἐστιν ἀντίληψις δι’ αἰσθητηρίου ἢ κατάληψις. (“… sensation is the perception or the comprehension through the sense organ”, my transl.). On the Stoic theory of sensation, see Grimal (1969), 52. Cf. Gal. Diff. Symp. VII.57ff. SVF ii.858 (= Plot. Ennead. iv.7.7).

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other.43 Thus, the painful sensation, first physical, travels through the nerves and necessarily creates a shock in the commanding-part of the soul, the ἡγεμονικόν.44 To refer to this shock, Seneca uses several times the expression ictus animi (“shock of the mind”),45 which only appears in his work.46 This lexical originality can be partly explained by the fact that the term ictus implies both the sensory origin of this psychological process, but also the non-responsibility of the mind in this movement imposed on it from the outside, hence its Stoic name of προπάθεια, “pre-emotion” or “pre-passion”.47 About these pre-emotions, two characteristics stand out. First of all, like sensations, they are natural and therefore inevitable,48 even in the wise man: Omnes enim motus qui non uoluntate nostra fiunt inuicti et ineuitabiles sunt (“For all movements that do not result from our own volition are uncontrolled and unavoidable”, Sen. Ir. ii.2.1).49 They constitute an automatic reaction,50 an “involuntary movement” (motus non uoluntarius, Ir. ii.4.1),51 because they are instinctive, linked to the nature52 and the condition of man, and thus universally felt. The wise man himself, suffering an attack to his physical integrity, will know the reflex manifestations linked to pain—sudden shock, reflex withdrawal of the injured part, tightening of the muscles—that nothing will be able to prevent, because they instinctively warn the organism of the danger it incurs. Not being subject to the will,53 they cannot therefore be avoided by reflection, by reason (inexpugnabilis rationi, Ep. 57.4: “a natural feeling which reason cannot rout”).54 Pre-emotion is indeed prior to the intervention of reason and judg43 44

45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

See SVF i.145 (= Them. De an. 68); ii.796 (= Chalcid. In Tim. 221); 799 (= Plot. Ennead. iv.7.10); Ogereau (2002), 135. On this complementary participation of body and soul in the sensation, see Arist. Somn. Vig. i.6.454a: … ἡ δὲ λεγομένη αἴσθησις ὡς ἐνέργεια κίνησίς τις διὰ τοῦ σώματος τῆς ψυχῆς ἐστι … (“… what is called sensation as an act is only a kind of movement that the soul receives through the body …”, my transl.); Ogereau (2002), 121. Sen. Ir. ii.2.2; 4.2; Constant. 10.4; Ep. 57.3; 99.18. On this expression only used by Seneca, see TLL, vii 1, p. 168, lin. 19, s.u. ictus. On these ‘pre-emotions’, see Cic. Tusc. iii.34.83; Sen. Ir. i.16.7 (= SVF i. 215); Plut. Virt. mor. 449D (= SVF iii.468); Gell. NA xix. 1.14–20; Gal. PHP iv.3.2 (= SVF i.209); Hadot (1969), 131–133; 182–184; Inwood (1985), 175–181; Frede (1986); Graver (2007); Dross (2010), 138– 146. Cf. Sen. Ep. 57.3; 74.31. Transl. slightly modified from Basore. See Ir. ii.3.2: corporis pulsus; Ep. 74.31: impetu. Cf. Ir. ii.2.1: motus qui non uoluntate nostra fiunt. Cf. Ep. 11.1: naturalia corporis; 74.31: quodam naturae impetu. On Seneca’s concept of uoluntas, see Voelke (1973), 161–190. Cf. Sen. Ir. ii.4.2: Primum illum animi ictum effugere ratione non possumus […] ista non potest ratio uincere (“We can no more avoid by the use of reason that first shock […] such

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ment, and therefore of the possibility of degenerating into passion. Moreover, if the wise man does not give his assent to the idea that pain is an evil, this preemotion remains in the natural sphere and becomes a good emotion, called εὐπάθεια by the Stoics. 3.2 Dolor-Passion Is Unnatural When it has become passion, the physical dolor is equal to what the ancient Stoics call λύπη, one of the four fundamental passions.55 They defined the passion of λύπη as a “false judgement of present evil”56 or a “distress”.57 Seneca gives no definition of dolor-passion, but briefly evokes these two defining criteria. On the one hand, he states that dolor is an evil that comes from opinion (doloris opinio, Sen. Constant. 5.2).58 On the other hand, he uses the same term of distress, or “contraction of the soul” (animorum contractio, Marc. 7.1) as that used by Cicero, translating himself Chrysippus’ συστολή. It is therefore a phase which comes after the intervention of reason, when a too weak reason has given its assent to the false opinion that pain is an evil. … sapiens et dolebit […] hi enim omnes corporis sensus sunt. […] ubi illud malum uerum est? Illic scilicet, si ista animum detrahunt, si ad confessionem seruitutis adducunt, si illi paenitentiam sui faciunt.

55 56

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impulses cannot be overcome by reason …”); Ep. 74.31: inconsulto quodam naturae impetu (“unconsciously and as the result of a sort of natural impulse”). SVF i. 211 (= Stob. Ecl. ii.7.10); iii.378 (= Stob. Ecl. ii.88.6); iii.386 (= Asp. in Arist. Eth. Nic. 44.12); iii.391 (= Andronicus, περὶ παθῶν 1.11); iii.412 (= Diog. Laert. vii.110). SVF iii.385 (= Cic. Tusc. iii.11.25): … aegritudo est opinio magni mali praesentis … (“distress is the idea of a serious present evil”); iii.387 (= Serv. ad Aeneid. vi.733): … dolere et timere duae opiniones malae sunt, una praesentis, alia futuri … (“pain and fear are two opinions about evil, one about present and one about future evil”, my transl.); iii.391 (= Andronic. περὶ παθῶν 1.11): λύπη μὲν οὖν ἐστιν […] δόξα πρόσφατος κακοῦ παρουσίας … (“distress is therefore the vivid opinion of a present evil”, my transl.); iii.444 (= Lactantius, Div. inst. vi.14); Cic. Tusc. iv.6.11; 6.14; 7.14. SVF iii.391 (= Andronic. περὶ παθῶν 1.11): λύπη μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ἄλογος συστολή (“distress is therefore an irrational contraction [of the soul]”); Cic. Tusc. iv.6.14: … haec prima definitio est, ut aegritudo sit animi aduersante ratione contractio (“… the first definition of distress is that it is a shrinking together of the soul in conflict with reason”); 7.14: Est ergo aegritudo opinio recens mali praesentis, in quo demitti contrahique animo rectum esse uideatur (“Distress then is a newly formed belief of present evil, the subject of which thinks it right to feel depression and shrinking of soul”); 31.66: in dolore contractio (“shrinks up in pain”). Cf. Sen. Ep. 78.13: Leuis est dolor si nihil illi opinio adiecerit. […] ad opinionem dolemus (“Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it […] It is according to opinion that we suffer”).

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… the wise man will feel pain […] For all these are sensations of the body. […] which is truly an evil? In the other part of us, no doubt, if it is the mind that these trials drag down, force to a confession of its servitude, and cause to regret its existence. (Sen. Ep. 71.29) From this moral fault, which consists in a wrong evaluation of the indifferent, arises the birth of passion, from which the wise man is entirely free. Unlike the sensation and pre-emotion of pain, dolor-passion is therefore avoidable, as it is contrary to reason and hence contrary to nature. Pain is therefore natural as long as it has not become passion, as long as reason has not intervened and has not fallen into error, a phase in which it becomes unnatural.

4

Pain and the Polysemy of Natura

This double characterisation is moreover explained by the polysemy of the word natura. Like its Greek equivalent phusis, the term refers both to the whole of what exists, the inherent nature of what is real, and to Nature as a creative and organising will. Thus, pain can be perceived as unnatural in the sense that it disrupts the physiological and natural state of the organism, but also as natural in the sense that Providence has given the ability to experience pain in human’s interest. 4.1 Pain as a Disturbance of the Physiological Configuration If we look at the different meanings of the expression contra naturam in Latin literature, we can see that the expression refers to, among other things, all the obstacles to the normal functioning of the human organism: pain, torture, wounds, poverty, prolonged wakefulness, the soporifics, and even sleep and death, insofar as the latter deprive the organism of sensation and movement.59 In this sense, pain goes against the physiological nature of man, of his normal state, namely the absence of pain when there is no painful stimulus.

59

Pain: Cic. Fin. i.9.30; iv.19.52: … dicunt illi asperum esse dolere, molestum, odiosum, contra naturam … (“… [the Stoics] tell them that though pain is irksome, annoying, hateful, unnatural …”); iv.26.72; Tusc. ii.7.17; 12.29; Sen. Ep. 66.14: contra naturam dolor; 66.19. Poverty: Cic. Off. iii.5.21; 5.26; 6.30. Wakefulness: Cic. Fin. v.19.54. Cf. Arist. Cael. ii.6.3; SVF iii.140 (= Stob. Ecl. ii.79.18). Soporifics: Ps.-Quintil. Min. 246.3. Sleep and death: Cic. Off. iii.5.21; 6.30; Sen. Ep. 66.37–38. Sensation and movement: Cic. Fin. v.19.54; Tert. de Anim. 43.1; 43.8.

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4.2 Pain as Obedience to God’s Will On the other hand, if we take the term natura in the sense of providential nature, manifestation of the divine will, in this case, pain is natural since it is Nature itself that created suffering for men.60 In Seneca’s works, this appears clearly in the physiological explanation of the law of nature according to which all pain is bearable. Indeed, as Epicurus first explained, a law of balance prevents the severity and term factors from ever being mixed together. For Seneca, it is Providence that does not allow severe pain to be prolonged: … nemo potest ualde dolore et diu: sic nos amantissima nostri natura disposuit, ut dolorem aut tolerabilem aut breuem faceret.61 No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short. (Sen. Ep. 78.7) Nature, with benevolence towards humankind (amantissima nostri natura), causes only endurable sufferings, either slight or momentary. The body is thus regulated by a natural process that interrupts the perception of pain in the most extreme cases: Hoc itaque solacium uasti doloris est, quod necesse est desinas illum sentire si nimis senseris (“This is, accordingly, a consolation for excessive pain, that you cannot help ceasing to feel it if you feel it to excess”, Sen. Ep. 78.10). For the philosopher, this seems to reveal that Nature is intentionally beneficent.62 The existence of this beneficent Providence makes it necessary to propose an ‘algodicy’, namely, to justify the existence of physical pain which must have a reason, as it is caused by Nature and as it happens to good and bad men. The idea that hardships that happen to good men are due to God himself does not seem to be part of the orthodoxy of the Old Stoa which emphasises rather the entire beneficence of the gods. Thus, Chrysippus claims that when man suffers physical harm caused by Nature, it is not God’s will, but it

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Cic. Tusc. v.1.3: Vereor enim ne natura, cum corpora nobis infirma dedisset iisque et morbos insanabiles et dolores intolerabiles adiunxisset … (“For I am afraid that nature in giving us, to begin with, feeble bodies, with which she has combined both incurable diseases and unendurable pains …”). Cf. Ep. 94.7 (= SVF i.359): Optimam doloris esse naturam, quod non potest nec qui extenditur magnus esse nec qui est magnus extendi. (“Remember that pain has this excellent quality: if prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged”). See Schrijvers (1990), 383–384.

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only happened by a necessary consequence.63 Hence, physical pain does not happen on purpose, but is due to one of the indirect and unavoidable consequences of nature’s organisation, one of the side effects of the benefits granted by God. Looking at physical harm as being part of the world’s harmony is already an algodicy, but Seneca goes much further than the standard Stoic theory. For him, if the good man endures hardships, it is precisely because he is a good man: His adiciam fato ista subiecta eadem lege bonis euenire, qua sunt boni (“I shall add, further, that these things happen thus by destiny, and that they rightly befall good men by the same law which makes them good”, Sen. Prov. 3.1). Indeed, the man who suffers hardships is favoured by God insofar as the latter gives him an opportunity to show his virtue: Ipsis, inquam, deus consulit, quos esse quam honestissimos cupit, quotiens illis materiam praebet aliquid animose fortiterque faciendi, ad quam rem opus est aliqua rerum difficultate.64 God, I say, is showing favour to those whom he wishes to achieve the highest possible virtue whenever he gives them the means of doing a courageous and brave deed, and to this end they must encounter some difficulty in life. (Sen. Prov. 4.5) If difficulties to overcome are caused by God, it is because they happen to allow some men to become honestissimos, “very virtuous”, and to prove that they can overcome the weakness of their body through the strength of their soul. This theory is developed in Seneca’s works through two analogies: that of the deusimperator and that of the deus-pater.65 Like the best soldiers chosen for the most difficult missions, the good man is chosen by God to test and show his value: Quare deus optimum quemque […] afficit? Quia in castris quoque periculosa fortissimis imperantur […] Nemo eorum qui exeunt dicit: “Male de me

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SVF ii.1170 (= Gell. NA vii.1.7). On this passage, see Prost (2004), 234; Benatouïl (2006), 266. Cf. Sen. Prov. 4.12: Quid mirum si dure generosos spiritus deus temptat? Numquam uirtutis molle documentum est (“Why, then, is it strange if God tries noble spirits with severity? No proof of virtue is ever mild”). On the analogy between God and an imperator, see Armisen-Marchetti (1989), 76; on the one between God and a father, see ibid. 147.

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imperator meruit”, sed: “Bene iudicauit”. Item dicant quicumque iubentur pati timidis ignauisque flebilia: “Digni uisi sumus deo in quibus experiretur quantum humana natura posset pati.”66 Why is it that God afflicts the best men […]? For the same reason that in the army the bravest men are assigned to the hazardous tasks […] Not a man of these will say as he goes, “My commander has done me an ill turn,” but instead, “He has paid me a compliment.” In like manner, all those who are called to suffer what would make cowards and poltroons weep may say, “God has deemed us worthy instruments of his purpose to discover how much human nature can endure.” (Sen. Prov. 4.8) The analogy between god and the benevolent father towards his children exemplifies the same idea: Patrium deus habet aduersus bonos uiros animum, et illos fortiter amat et: “Operibus, inquit, doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut uerum colligant robur.” Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, “Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength.” (Sen. Prov. 2.6) The fact that sufferings endured by humans are caused by God is thus presented in a favourable light. Indeed, God is harsh, but as a father who cherishes his sons (amat) and who is always concerned with their well-being. It is a manly love, linked to the expression of the virtue of fortitude ( fortitudo), as the use of the adverb fortiter indicates. If he exhorts them to endure physical pain, it is in their own interest, so that they may harden themselves and acquire a true strength of resistance (uerum robur)67 through experience. There are therefore two ways of conceiving homologia (“conformity”) with nature according to whether it is about the particular nature, that of human 66

67

Cf. Sen. Prov. 4.4; 4.7: Hos itaque deus quos probat, quos amat, indurat, recognoscit, exercet; eos autem quibus indulgere uidetur, quibus parcere, molles uenturis malis seruat. (“In like manner God hardens, reviews, and disciplines those whom he approves, whom he loves. Those, however, whom he seems to favour, whom he seems to spare, he is really keeping soft against ills to come.”); 5.3. This benevolent hardening is that of the Spartan fathers who harden their sons by subjecting them to the rite of flogging (Prov. 4.11). The idea that Spartans attach great importance, in the education of their children, to endurance and physical pain is a topos that can be found, for example, in Quintil. Inst. iii.7.24.

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beings, or the universal nature (that is, the administration of the world, ἡ κοίνη φύσις) which results from God’s law: in the first case, pain is contrary to our nature, in the second, pain is in accordance with nature. Actually, the ultimate aim of philosophy is to make these two natures coincide in order to be happy.68

5

Conclusion

Living in accordance with nature is the Stoic motto, the ideal which is the main foundation of Stoic ethics. The reflexion on pain in accordance with nature is therefore a central question in Stoic thought. We have seen that claiming the natural or unnatural characterisation of pain faces the problem of the polysemy for the terms dolor and natura. Pain is natural as long as it is not passion, but once it has become passion, it is an unnatural phenomenon. Moreover, if nature seems to go against our human nature, it coincides with the universal nature according to which pain befalls men in their own interest. But the different meanings of dolor and natura, far from being contradictory, allow us to build a coherent system, with a subtle notion of pain, which is seen not as a monolithic reality, but as an evolving phenomenon, of which the very evolution is to witness the quality of the sufferer’s soul. For both terms, it is the intervention of reason that resolves the apparent contradiction. It is reason that allows pain to remain natural by never giving assent to the idea that pain is an evil, and never allowing pre-emotion to become passion. In the same way, it is reason that must make the particular nature coincide with the universal nature, by accepting, and even willing, that pain should always be natural, since it is a part of God’s universal plan: pain seems to us unnatural only because it is not in our power to understand the divine plan. It is therefore the intervention of reason and judgment that defines what is natural and what is unnatural. For a Stoic, only an error of judgment, a behaviour contrary to reason, is unnatural. The originality of Stoic thought is therefore to claim that men can contain pain within its natural boundaries, since its status does not lie in itself, but in the ways in which men appraise it.

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Sen. Ep. 124.13–14. See Besnier (1999), 119, 125.

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Graver, M.R. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Grimal, P. (1969) Sénèque: De uita beata. Édition, introduction et commentaire. Paris: P.U.F. Hadot, I. (1969) Seneca und die griechisch-römische Tradition der Seelenleitung. Berlin: de Gruyter. Inwood, B. (1985) Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lévy, C. (1996) (ed.), Le concept de nature à Rome. Paris: Presses de l’ENS. Lévy, C. (1999) ‘Nature et règles de vie dans le stoïcisme et le pyrrhonisme’, in Ch. Cusset (ed.), La nature et ses représentations dans l’Antiquité. Paris: C.N.D.P., pp. 133–146. Malaspina, E. (2015) ‘Dolor in Seneca: dai presupposti teoretici alle pratiche consolatorie ed alle passioni in scena’, Antiquorum Philosophia 9: 41–53. Ogereau, F. (2002) Essai sur le système philosophique des Stoïciens. Paris: Vrin. Prost, F. (2004) Les théories hellénistiques de la douleur. Leuven: Peeters. Rey, R. (1993) Histoire de la douleur. Paris: La Découverte. Rodis-Lewis, G. (1975) Épicure et son école. Paris: Gallimard. Rosenmeyer, T.G. (2000) ‘Seneca and Nature’, Arethusa 33(1): 99–119. Schrijvers, P.H. (1990) ‘Douleur, où est ta victoire? À propos de la lettre 78 de Sénèque’, Mnemosyne 43(3–4): 374–394 Striker, G. (1991) ‘Following Nature: A Study in Stoic Ethics’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 9: 1–73. Striker, G. (2000) ‘The Role of oikeiôsis in Stoic Ethics’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20(1): 145–167. Voelke, A. -J. (1973) L’idée de volonté dans le stoïcisme. Paris: P.U.F. Woolf, C. (2007) ‘Deconstructing Pain: A Deterministic Dissection of the Molecular Basis of Pain’, in S. Coakley & K. Kaufman Shelemay (eds), Pain and its Transformations: the interface of Biology and Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 27–35.

chapter 6

Pain with a PR Problem: Narrating Gout-Induced Pain in the Second Sophistic Georgia Petridou

1

Introduction: Gout-Induced Pain and Its PR Problem

Pain is a strange beast.1 The assessment and understanding of pain presents the greatest of challenges for students of pain and patient history (ancient and modern alike). The lived experience of pain evades the historian of disability, the ancient historian, and the archaeologist. It often eludes even the palaeopathologist, who might be able to recognise the physical markers of an ancient ailment on human remains but misses altogether the pervasiveness of chronic suffering in the individual’s lived experience and relationships. Even modern pain specialists, who rely exclusively on quantitative neuroscientific tools, such as fMRI results, for the exploration of pain cannot quite fully comprehend nor qualify its impact on the everyday life of the individual sufferer(s).2 This study targets narrative strategies and the individual experience of pain in the ancient world, with an extra focus on gout-induced pain in the first and second centuries ce. To that end, this chapter surveys key literary and epigraphic evidence from this period. The main aim is to showcase the high impact that gout-related pain has on the ‘lived bodies’ of sufferers. The ‘lived body’ is a concept I have borrowed from Meredith McGuire, a sociologist of religion, who uses this term to express the idea of the material body as both the vehicle for perceiving and interpreting social reality and also the only means of anchoring human experience in reality.3 McGuire’s ‘lived body’ is “both a biological and cultural product, simultaneously physical and symbolic, existing always in a specific social and environmental context in which the body is both an active 1 Heartfelt thanks go to the editors of the volume for inviting me to the conference, in which a first draft of this paper was presented. Special thanks are owed to Daniel King for discussing with me pain narratives and subversion strategies on a different occasion. I am also extremely grateful to Paul Scade for reading the paper and saving me from several linguistic infelicities, and to Simon van Rysewyk for generously sharing with me a copy of the second volume of his edited volume, (2019) Meanings of Pain: Common Types of Pain and Language. 2 Van Rysewyk (2017) and (2019). 3 McGuire (1990).

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agent and yet shaped by each social moment and its history”. The ‘lived body’ is fundamentally different from the body as an object of observation (especially in clinical practice). The experience of the ‘lived body’ is unique and uniquely experienced by each individual—because individuals are uniquely embodied—and yet shared, communicated, and mediated (directly or indirectly, successfully or not) via common cultural symbols (for example language), shared social roles, and social expectations.4 In pursuing these aims, I will explore ancient and modern cultural framings of the disease, precisely because, as I argue, synchronic cultural framings of a disease affect individual pain experience, communication, and management.5 We can take as an example a modern gout sufferer, the journalist Rob McGibbon, who chronicled his battle with gout in a popular column of The Sunday Times Magazine: I have a painful secret: I get gout. I have had 24 attacks since 2002, mostly in my ankles. I know that because I have kept a gout diary—my contribution to ‘misery lit’. I will save the pain until later, but first I need to explain why I have kept this awful affliction quiet. The problem with gout is that it makes people snigger. It’s hard to think of another serious health issue that encourages such mirth. … Gout has a PR problem. … Now for the pain: trust me it is horrendous. Mine begins suddenly across the top of a foot and panic sets in as it gradually spreads to the toes. Within five or six hours, the entire foot and ankle is transformed into a hot, bloated, pulsating red sausage of agony.6 McGibbon describes the pain he experiences as “horrendous” and goes on to explain in the remainder of the article the huge impact it has on his overall quality of life. Yet this modern sufferer has often opted to conceal his long-term struggle with gout out of fear about perceptions of his illness in his wider social environment. “Things certainly aren’t helped when some newspapers insist on 4 McGuire (1990) 285 passim. Cf. Petridou (2020). More on the LAR approach in Rüpke (2011), Rüpke (2016) and Rüpke (2018). Cf. also the introduction in the edited volume by Raja and Rüpke (2015), as well as Albrecht et al. (2018). 5 I use the concept of ‘framing a disease’ the same way Charles Rosenberg does in the introduction to Rosenberg and Golden (1992), a seminal volume on the cultural history of disease. In Rosenberg’s view, disease is both a biological event and a social phenomenon. Many diseases, such as rheumatic fever, parasitic infectious diseases, or coronary thrombosis were re-defined and re-named over the course of several centuries. The biological event of disease is framed by patients, doctors, individuals, social institutions, and public policy. 6 McGibbon (2019) 40–41.

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using Henry viii to illustrate every gout article. It is often described as the ‘disease of the kings’, so mad Henry is our poster boy”, McGibbon complains in the same article.7 The modern gout sufferer, I argue here, is not so dissimilar to the ancient one. They both face analogous challenges, because gout—a lingering and extremely painful, but rarely lethal, disease—provided ample opportunity for disparagement and ridicule in the Graeco-Roman world.8 The main reason for this is that gout was an illness traditionally associated with a rich diet and sedentary lifestyle. An opulent and indulgent lifestyle seems to be linked directly to gout already in the Hippocratic Prorrhetic ii (2.8 = 9.26–28 L.), whose author maintains that although gout is incurable in elderly sufferers, young people with no sign of calcareous concretions (epiporomata) in their joints can potentially be cured of the disease, as long as they are willing to make radical changes to their lifestyle and acquire the services of an intelligent physician. Gout also has strong links with sexual maturity and excessive sexual activity. The Hippocratic Aphorisms state clearly that eunuchs (6.28 = 4.570 L.), menstruating women (6.29 = 4.570 L.), and pre-coital adolescent boys (6.30 = 4.570 L.)9 remain unaffected by gout. However, later medical authors and philosophers from the Roman period (for example Celsus, De Medicina 4.29; 4.31.1–2; Seneca, Letters 95.20) tended to disagree with this oversimplistic equation, at least as far as eunuchs were concerned. Galen (On Hippocrates’ Aphorisms 18A.42–43K), in particular, maintains that “eunuchs are also affected by gout, even though they are completely deprived of sexual pleasure. Their laziness, gluttony and thirst for wine are so excessive that even without indulging in sex, they can be affected by gout, especially in the feet”. The possibility of suffering from gout as a result of one’s congenital predisposition, although briefly mentioned by the author of the Prorrh. (2.5 = 9.20 L), was not properly explored until the Imperial Era. Galen, in particular, seems to have spent much more time investigating this aspect of the illness. In Hipp. Aph. he lays emphasis on the congenital predisposition of gout’s victims: “One must add another reason to the ones I have already given in order to explain why gout is so widespread today: many victims stem from podagral fathers and 7 There is, of course, a self-consciousness to McGibbon’s narrative representation of his suffering from gout and his awareness of the negative mainstream media PR image of gout. Effectively, McGibbon chooses to reveal his long-lasting secret suffering in a national newspaper, thus subverting the dominant cultural narrative through his own representation of pain and his choice of narrative genre (confessional journalism). 8 Petridou (2018a). 9 Cf. Hp. Coac. 5.30 (= 5.700 L.), where it is also mentioned that gout (podagriká) does not develop in patients who have not reached puberty yet.

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grandfathers; it is clear that their seed was already of bad quality and for this reason, it has resulted in the weakening of their limbs”.10 However, the common popular misconception concerning gout, evident from Aristophanes’ Plutos (559–560) to Lucian’s Philopseudes (7–10),11 was that this was an illness of the socio-economic elite. Gout was seen as the illness of the privileged few who could afford both this sort of extravagant lifestyle and also the leisure to contemplate calmly about the pain in their gout-afflicted body parts. Gout was therefore dubbed the ‘patrician malady’ and attracted much unsympathetic PR, from which it still suffers today.12 But how did it feel to suffer from the kind of acute and chronic gout-induced pain that often leads to debilitating disability?

2

Gout-Induced Pain and the ‘Lived Body’

“Pain (ponos) in the hand or foot is not against nature, provided that the foot and hand are fulfilling their own tasks. Hence not even for a man as man is pain contrary to nature. If it’s not contrary to nature, it’s not evil for him”,13 writes the Roman Emperor and renowned Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations (6.33). Marcus thus emphasises that pain is not contrary to human nature. Functionality is the ultimate litmus test, as was often the case with illness (physical and mental alike) in the Imperial Era. Elsewhere though in the same work (7.33), Marcus recognises that there are two kinds of pain:14 that which can be borne and that which cannot. It is the latter type that takes us away from life.15 Gout-induced pain was supposed by Marcus to belong more to the first category than to the second: Marcus had witnessed for years the pure 10 11

12 13 14 15

Gal. Hipp. Aph. 18A.43K. Cf. also Lucian, Gall. 23: οἱ δὲ ὑπ’ ἀκρασίας ἄθλιοι τί τῶν κακῶν οὐκ ἔχουσι, ποδάγρας καὶ φθόας καὶ περιπλευμονίας καὶ ὑδέρους; αὗται γὰρ τῶν πολυτελῶν ἐκείνων δείπνων ἀπόγονοι. “But the rich, unhappy that they are—what ills are they not subject to through intemperance? Gout and consumption and pneumonia and dropsy are the consequences of those splendid dinners” (Transl. Harmon). On gout in Classical and post-Classical literature, see the introduction in Setti (1910), Anderson (1979), Porter and Rousseau (1998), 13–21, Karavas (2005) and (2008), Ní Mheallaigh (2014), 72–82, Whitmarsh (2013), and King (2018), 115–128. On gout as the ‘patrician malady’ see Porter and Rousseau (1998), 13–21. Birley (1987), 216. For more on the correspondence of Marcus and Fronto (where intimate details about their own illnesses were exchanged), see the introduction in Várhelyi (2010). M. Aur. Med. 7.33: “About pain (ponos): The pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind (dianoia) maintains its own

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agony and despair this illness caused to Fronto, his beloved teacher and friend, who nevertheless endured the suffering and even managed to reflect on it from a philosophical point of view in his correspondence with Marcus.16 Pliny the younger, by contrast, recalls in his Letters (1.12) the suicide of his dear friend and mentor Corellius Rufus. Rufus committed suicide against the protestations of his family members in an attempt to escape the gradual deterioration of his quality of life, limited functionality, and, above all, the unbearable amount of pain, all caused by an aggressive form of gout which had spread from his feet to all of his limbs.17 Pliny’s sobering recollection of his departed friend puts Marcus’ aphorism about differentiating between tolerable and intolerable pain into persective. There is no such thing as an objectivelly bearable or unbearable amount of pain, there are only ‘lived bodies’ and individuals on each of whose shoulders pain in general, and gout-induced pain in particular, weighs very differently. Indeed, Pliny emphasises the unbelievable agony that tortured his friend Corellius Rufus in a cruel and undeserving way. Corellius’ gout was of a hereditary nature, and was managed in his youth via dietary restraint and sheer mental strength.18 Nonetheless, Corellius was led to commit suicide at the grand age of 76 when his quality of life had become so compromised by gout-inflicted pain that “his reasons for dying outweighted everything that life could give him” (1.12.4). Like Pliny and Marcus, Lucian, in his paratragedy Podagra (“Gout”), also places emphasis on the severity and the all-conquering nature of gout-induced pain, but subverts and re-signifies it by making it the subject matter of a paratragedy (that is, ‘mock-tragedy’)19 in which gout is personified and recast as

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tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty (hegemonikon) is not made worse. But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it”. A more comedic take on Fronto’s gout-induced suffering is delivered in Attic Nights (19.10.1) by Gellius, who was also one of Fronto’s students. Cf. also Gell. 2.26.1 and 4.13, where soothing music is recommended as an effective analgesic for gout-related pain, but simultaneously dismissed as an effective long-term cure. On suicide as a last solution to deal with pain in illness, see Gourevitch (1969). Plin. Ep. 1.12.5–6: Hunc abstinentia sanctitate, quoad viridis aetas, vicit et fregit; novissime cum senectute ingravescentem viribus animi sustinebat, cum quidem incredibiles cruciatus et indignissima tormenta pateretur. [6] Iam enim dolor non pedibus solis ut prius insidebat, sed omnia membra pervagabatur. “While he was in the prime of life, he overcame his malady and kept it well in check by abstemious and pure living, and when it became sharper in its attacks, as he grew old, he bore up against it with great fortitude of mind. Even when he suffered incredible torture and the most horrible agony—for the pain was no longer confined, as before, to the feet, but had begun to spread over all his limbs.” In terms of generic context, Lucian’s Pod. (the manuscripts also give Tragopodagra and Tragodopodagra) is a mock-tragedy. More on paratragedy in Karavas (2005), 327–331,

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a goddess, who presides over Mysteries of the highest order, of the type that were extremely popular in the Antonine Era.20 In Pod., gout-induced pain is presented as acute and chronic. Gout-induced mental and physical suffering is experienced by the ‘lived body’ of the protagonist Podagros (“the Gouty Man”), as a major crisis that challenges the foundations of his previously established identity and, thus, evokes ritually rehearsed crises that the individual has undergone in earlier initiatory rites.21 In the play, experiencing gout-related pain is paramount to the initiatory process, and gout sufferers are thought of as the mystae, that is those initiated in the rites of the all-mighty Podagra. The goddess Podagra is called “invincible Lady of pains” (ἀνίκητος δεσπότις πόνων) and resembles Isis, Cybele, or even Bacchus in presiding over peculiar and powerful mysteric rites (112, 125, 127, 129–137, 180). Both patients and physicians obey the almighty goddess Podagra, whose mysteries consist of inflicting terrible physical pain and agony on her initiates (119–123). Throughout the play, we are told that the physical ordeal the goddess Podagra puts her devotees through can only be relieved by the goddess herself (136, 245, 308). Her mystae, her initiates, are left pain-stricken, begging for the salvation that can only be provided by her divine epiphany (131–137).22

3

Initiation into the Mysteries of Podagra

In Pod., the famous Hippocratic triangle of patient, physician, and illness is twisted into a tragicomic pentagon consisting of Podagra (the Goddess Gout), Podagros (the Gouty Man), a chorus of Gout sufferers (Podagroi), two wandering Syrian physicians, and the personified pains (Ponoi) that the Goddess inflicts on the physicians who dare to challenge her authority by providing a salve that ameliorates the suffering.23 The prologue (1–29), delivered by Pod-

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Manuwald (2014), 580–600, Whitmarch (2013), and King (2018), 121–122. Karavas rightly argues that Pod. was not destined for performance on stage but was, rather, intended for private entertainment. See more in Karavas (2005), esp. 327 and 331. In this, Karavas may be following Bompaire’s idea of “un dialogue du salon”. Petridou (2017) and (2018b). This idea of chronic illness as initiation, and of the ‘lived body’ in pain as undergoing a painful but worthwhile initiation (myesis) into Mysteria of the highest order, finds a uniquely powerful expression in another text, Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi. More on this in Petridou (2020) and eadem (2021). Cf. Aristid. Or. 50.50–51 Keil, where it is stated explicitly that the epiphany of the god Asclepius soothes Aristides’ severe pain. More on this in Petridou (2016). On the Hippocratic triangle, see Gourevitch (1984) and, more recently, Webster (2016).

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agros (“the Gouty Man”), gives an idea of both Podagra’s high pedigree (she is the daughter of Kokytos and Magaira, one of the Furies) and the dominant social framing of gout as a punishment for excessive dietary habits and a sedentary lifestyle. Note, however, that this populist approach co-exists with contemporary ‘scientific’ explanation of attacks of gout in the human body (15– 22), which attributed the condition either to a disturbance in the equilibrium of the humours or to a perforation of one or more of the humours. In his On the Composition of Drugs According to Places (Comp. Med. Loc.) (13.331K), Galen accepted that the origins of gout were to be found in an excessive concentration of blood, phlegm, and yellow bile together, or a combination of phlegm, yellow bile, and blood in the joints. However, in his De rebus boni malique suci (6.814K), the second-century physician modified this widely held view by identifying κακοχυμία, that is the perforation of one of the humours, as the cause of the illness. After the parodos, Podagros joins the chorus of other gouty men, the Podagroi. The gouty men shout and groan in desperation and liken their frenzied dances to initiatory rites in honour of Cybele and Attis (30–40). The Goddess Podagra refers to her entourage of Ponoi, that is the personified painful attacks, as her accompanying Bacchae. The Podagroi, who identify themselves as initiates (mystae, 44), have come to pay tribute to the periodic onset of Podagra and her attacks, which usually take place in the spring (44–45).24 At line 54, Podagros joins in the lamentations and gives a comedic version of the typical clinical image of a gout sufferer: the man has not left his bed for fifteen days and now remarks on the body-soul fragmentation he is experiencing: his willing soul urges him to walk but his weak body holds him back (66–71). In an apostrophe to his thymos (a very Homeric body part), the gouty man declares that his current state of extreme pain has made him long for death: ὅμως δ’ ἐπείγου, θυμέ, γιγνώσκων ὅτι/ πτωχὸς ποδαγρῶν, περιπατεῖν μὲν ἂν θέλῃ/ καὶ μὴ δύνηται, τοῦτον ἐν νεκροῖς τίθει (69–72). The Podagroi, the chorus of gouty men,25 draw attention to Podagros’ walking stick and recognise him as a fellow sufferer, or else, a fellow initiate of the invincible goddess: “we see a mystes of the invincible goddess”, μύστην ὁρῶμεν τῆς ἀνικήτου θεᾶς (85). Podagros in turn acknowledges the Podagroi, who are all equipped with walking sticks like Podagros himself, and asks about the identity

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Springtime (alongside autumn) is described as common for the onset of gout in a number of earlier and contemporary medical treatises. See below. Whitmarsh (2013, 182) emphasises the fact that the text does not clarify the sex of the chorus. However, we can hardly imagine the Podagroi as women, unless Lucian had opted for a chorus of post-menopausal females. More on this topic in Petridou (2018a).

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of the deity they honour with their frenzied dances (112–128). This scene refers to the social aspect of pain and how it forces sufferers to relate more closely to other sufferers. It also foregrounds the primary and secondary benefits of patient-centered groups and organisations. As Stuart Derbyshire argues in a different context, “part of the trouble arises from treating pain as a private experience when the roots of pain lie in a socially negotiated subjectivity” (emphasis mine).26 The Podagros does not immediately recognise the Podagroi as his fellow sufferers, but his “third leg” (54), that is his walking stick, provides a visual manifestation of the impaired functionality of their feet and their inability to walk unaided. The moment the Podragros joins the group of his fellow sufferers also marks a point of radical change in his social identity. The gout-induced pain transforms the gouty man from a social outcast, who is lying alone in his bed to an integral member of a tightly knitted community, his fellow sufferers and devotees of the goddess Podagra.27 Nevertheless, Podagros is still confused and asks for further information about the nature of the mystic rites of the Podagroi (112–128). The gouty men explain that, unlike the devotees of Magna Mater, the followers of Bacchus, and those initiated in the mysteries of Mithras, they do not engage in bodily modification or wild and bloodthirsty rituals that involve the eating of animals. Instead, they subject themselves to a more subtle, yet far more painful, kind of initiation rite: that instituted by the goddess Gout, which takes place in Spring. At 117–124, there is an unquestionable emphasis on the extreme amount of pain gout causes its sufferers during the springtime bouts of the disease. This passage is worth quoting at length.

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ὅτε δὲ πτελέας ἔαρι βρύει τὸ λεπτὸν ἄνθος καὶ πολυκέλαδος κόσσυφος ἐπὶ κλάδοισιν ᾄδει, τότε διὰ μελέων ὀξὺ βέλος πέπηγε μύσταις, ἀφανές, κρύφιον, δεδυκὸς ὑπὸ μυχοῖσι γυίων, πόδα, γόνυ, κοτύλην, ἀστραγάλους, ἰσχία, μηρούς, χέρας, ὠμοπλάτας, βραχίονας, κόρωνα, καρποὺς ἔσθει, νέμεται, φλέγει, κρατεῖ, πυροῖ, μαλάσσει, μέχρις ἂν ἡ θεὸς τὸν πόνον ἀποφυγεῖν κελεύσῃ. But when the spring brings tender flowers upon the elm and blackbirds’ bubbling song is heard on every bough, then the limbs of the mystae are

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Derbyshire (2016), 23. Many thanks to Daniel King for discussing this point with me.

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pierced by a sharp arrow, invisible, secret, sinking into the utmost depth of the joints: the foot, the knee, hip-joint, ankles, groins and thighs, hands, shoulder-blades, and arms, the elbows and the wrists it eats, devours, burns, quells, inflames and softens up, until the goddess bids the pain to flee away.28 Although set in a comedic context, the passage quoted above offers a valuable insight into the individual experience of the disease as a gradual process of bodily fragmentation and an inescapable acceleration of pain. The same process of escalating physical agony and bodily disintegration is described in lines 275– 287 but this time it is seen from an external point of view: the almighty goddess Podagra, like another Dionysus, orders the Ponoi, her Bacchic entourage of personified pains (282), to attack the body of the two Syrian physicians who have falsely claimed the ability to cure gout through the application of a potent salve.29 ΠΟΔΑΓΡΑ Εἶτ’ ὦ κατάρατοι καὶ κακῶς ὀλούμενοι, ἔστιν τις ἐν γῇ φαρμάκου δρᾶσις τόση, ὃ χρισθὲν οἶδε τὴν ἐμὴν παῦσαι βίαν; ἀλλ’ εἶα, τήνδε σύμβασιν συνθώμεθα, καὶ πειράσωμεν εἴτε φαρμάκου σθένος 280 ὑπέρτερον πέφυκεν εἴτ’ ἐμαὶ φλόγες. 275

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Transl. Macleod modified. In terms of symptomatic treatment of the severe gout-induced pain, all sorts of ad hoc therapies are proposed in the various Hippocratic treatises. The author of the appendix of On Diseases of Women i (Mul. i, 98 = 8. 224 L.) proposes a cooked concoction of salt, water, red saltpetre, honey, and alum as the main antidote to gout-induced pain medium to alleviate pain; while the author of the Aph. (5. 25 = 4. 540 L) promotes copious affusion of the afflicted joints with cold water, which was meant to reduce the swelling, and numb the pain. One can easily imagine that a recipe like the one mentioned above could have been used to produce the “potent” salve advertised by the two Syrian doctors in Lucian’s Pod. Indeed, some of the materials mentioned in Lucian’s list of ingredients used to cure gout appear also in Dioscorides’ list of materia medica used to alleviate the pain of the disease (Riddle [1985], 44–47), and Beck (2011, 275). In his On Treatment by Bloodletting (Cur. Rat. Ven. Sect. 11.307K), Galen adds phlebotomy in the elbow to the limited gamut of dietary and pharmacological treatments of gout, which could be used as a means of prophylaxis especially during the springtime. Of the ordinary food stuff that may be beneficial to gouty patients, in the sixth book of his On Hygiene (San. Tu. 4.7.8, 22–24 Koch = 6.290K) Galen singles out watered-down wine, which he also recommends to patients suffering from bouts of arthritis.

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δεῦτ’, ὦ σκυθρωπαί, πάντοθεν ποτώμεναι βάσανοι, πάρεδροι τῶν ἐμῶν βακχευμάτων, πελάζετ’ ἆσσον· καὶ σὺ μὲν ποδῶν ἄκρους φλέγμαινε ταρσοὺς δακτύλων ποδῶν ἄχρις, 285 σὺ δὲ σφυροῖς ἔμβαινε, σὺ δὲ μηρῶν ἄπο ἐς γόνατα λεῖβε πικρὸν ἰχώρων βάθος, ὑμεῖς δὲ χειρῶν δακτύλους λυγίζετε. Goddess Gout Then, cursed ones whose death will be bitter, Is there on earth a remedy of such effect, An ointment potent which can check my violence? But come, upon these terms let us agree; Let’s test the might of the remedy to find 280 If it or if my burning pain prevails. Come, grim-faced ones, from every side fly here, torments, comrades of my Bacchic rites, approach, come near; you inflame the tips of their feet, from heel to utmost tip of toe; 285 you assail their ankles; and you from the hip bones down to their knees make you rank poison flow; and you must twist the fingers of their hands.30 275

The Ponoi attack the individual parts of the physician’s body. The painful fragmentation starts from the lower extremities (for the toes of his feet) and spreads upwards (to the fingers of the hands). No joint is to be left alone: ankles, thighs, knees, they must all be engulfed by excruciating anguish. This toe to top escalation of somatic suffering recalls analogous clinical descriptions of bodily breakdowns due to bouts of gout that appear in another medical author roughly contemporary with Lucian, Aretaeus of Cappadocia. Aretaeus was the author of a long medical treatise On the Causes and the Signs of Acute Diseases (SA).31 At 2.12.5 in this treatise, we read: 5. […] ἰσχιάδος μὲν ἀπὸ μηροῦ κατόπιν ἢ ἰγνύος ἢ κνήμης ἡ ἀρχή. ἄλλοτε δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ κοτύλῃ τὸ ἄλγημα φαίνεται, αὖθις ἐς γλουτὸν ἢ ὀσφὺν ὀκέλλει, καὶ πάντα μᾶλλόν ἐστιν ἢ δόκησις ἰσχίου. ἀτὰρ καὶ τὰ ἄρθρα ὧδέ πως ἄρχεται· τοῦ ποδὸς

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Transl. Macleod modified. On “the shadowy figure of Aretaeus”, see King (2018), 43–66.

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τὸν μέγαν δάκτυλον ἀλγέει, αὖθις τὴν ἐπιπρόσω πτέρνην, ᾗ πότι στηριζόμεθα· ἔπειτα ἐς τὸ κοῖλον ἧκε, τὸ δὲ σφυρὸν ἐξῴδησε ὕστατον. […] The commencement of ischiatic disease is from the thigh behind, the ham, or the leg. Sometimes the pain appears in the cotyloid cavity, and again extends to the nates or loins, and has the appearance of anything rather than an affection of the hip joint. But the joints begin to be affected in this way: pain seizes the great toe; then the forepart of the heel on which we lean; next it comes into the hollow of the foot, but the ankle swells last. Moreover, in the first book of his On the Powers of Simple Drugs (11.432–433K), Galen criticises quack doctors who promise quick and painless recovery by means of ineffective ointments. The two Syrian doctors in Lucian’s Pod. (265– 274) are faced with analogous accusations when the goddess Gout herself lifts the veil of their false claims and reveals the inadequacy of their treatment.32 The transformation of the doubting doctor after the goddess’ painful divine intervention is quick and wondrous (297–307). The physician whose joints have been torn apart by extreme pain admits defeat and addresses Podagra as anassa (“my Queen”, “my Lady”). His remedy has been proved useless in the face of chronic and acute pain and he has been forced to experience for himself that which he falsely claimed to be able to cure. Podagra acknowledges the Podagros’ confession and change of mind (metanoia) and orders the Ponoi to retreat.33 The vote is unanimous, the rhetorical agōn (311) has been won by Podagra. This whole scene, encompassing the physician’s physical suffering and religious conversion into the Mystēria of Podagra is, of course, meant to be hilarious. However, as should be apparent by now, laughter in Lucian’s Pod. is pointedly grounded in pain and the realities of bodily suffering. More importantly, as the next section clearly shows, Lucian’s Pod. may have been intended as a comedic take on gout, but its depiction is informed by (a) long-standing contemporary cultural framings of disease (presented as an aggressive entity

32

33

I do not suggest that Lucian would have read these exact treatises—such a suggestion would make for a very narrow and not particularly fruitful conception of intertextuality. These ideas were part of a rich range of medical topics that would have been popular with the members of the intellectual and socio-political elite of his times. More in van Nuffelen (2014), Paz de Hoz (2014), Petridou (2017), and the introduction in King (2018) with more bibliographical references. The episode has been rightly compared to the content of a confession inscription of the type often found in Phrygia and Lydia. See Petzl (1991).

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that transforms things into prey), and by (b) contemporary scientific understandings of its aetiology and symptomology.

4

Gout-Induced Pain and the Doctors

The Syrian doctors in Lucian’s Pod. were not alone in being intimidated and indeed defeated by gout. The author of the second book of the Hippocratic Prorrh. (2.8 = 9.26 L.) lists gout among illnesses that occasionally a physician should refuse to treat. Likewise, a wide range of medical authors contemporary with Lucian have laid emphasis on the extraordinary amount of pain gout sufferers were faced with as well as their limited capacity to alleviate this sort of pain. Aretaeus (SA. 2.12.2), for example, regards the pain induced by gout in the big toe and its ligaments as more severe than iron screws, cords, or the wound of a dagger or even burning fire, and admits that although humans might try to understand the disease’s probable causes, the true reasons behind occurrences of gout were only known to the gods: αἰτίην δὲ ἀτρεκέα μὲν ἴσασι μοῦνοι θεοί, ἐοικυῖαν δὲ καὶ ἄνθρωποι (SA. 2.12.3). An equally grim portrait of gout-induced pain is painted already by the author of the Hippocratic Affections (31 = 6.242–245 L.): Podagra is the fiercest, longest and most tenacious of all joint diseases; it occurs when blood which is present in the veinlets has been contaminated by bile and phlegm and since these are the thinnest and tightest vessels of the body, (the same applies to the neighbouring tendons and bones), pain is thus the most intense in this area. The same cure as used for arthritis is suitable in this case; the disease is long and painful, but not lethal. If the pain (odune) does not subside in the big toes, then one will cauterise the toe’s vessels above the condyle and this will be performed with raw flax.34 Besides podagra, the authors of the Hippocratic Corpus identify several other joint diseases (arthritis, arthritika, arthron ponoi, oidemata, and eparseis of the joints, kedmata and ischias). ‘Rheumatic diseases’ is the umbrella term used for all of these ailments, which are emphatically said to be extremely painful.35

34 35

Transl. Byl. For rheumatism and gout in the Hippocratic Corpus, see Byl (1988), who also contrasts the multitude of attestations of podagra, podagriao, podagrao and cognates in HC with

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Despite technological progress and pharmacological advances, gout today remains an incurable disease. Treatment with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), steroids, or colchicine alleviates symptoms but does not eliminate the disease whose acute attacks are triggered by both genetic and environmental factors.36 Of course, it is not easy (indeed at times it is quite impossible) to equate ancient with modern afflictions. In the Graeco-Roman world, the main treatment for any sort of illness focused primarily on its symptoms rather than its aetiology. When the aetiology was identified, it was often closely linked to one or more kinds of humoral imbalance. Gout (gutta in Latin) was no exception. Indeed, the Latin vox propria for gout gutta (literally “drop”) is a reference to the synchronic concept of gout as a dropping, an excessive flow of one or more humours to the joints. For example, in the Hippocratic Aff. (31 = 6.242–245 L.) it is the deterioration in blood caused by bile and phlegm that is held responsible for the onset of gout,37 while Rufus of Ephesus in his De podagra (a Latin translation of a lost Greek original) mentions only blood, bile, and phlegm as the causes of the ailment.38 Similarly, as seen above, in his Comp. Med. Loc. (13.331K), Galen attributed gout to an extreme concentration of blood, phlegm, and yellow bile together, or a combination of both phlegm, yellow bile, and blood in the joints.39 The technical term for the disease, podagra, is also a nod to the Greek cultural framing of gout as an aggressive entity that hunts down the affected bodily parts: the foot (pous + agra = podagra); the hand (cheir + agra = cheiragra); the knee (gonu + agra = gonagra), et cetera. See, for example, how cleverly Lucian reveals Podagra’s etymological roots: Ποδάγρα καλοῦμαι, γινομένη ποδῶν ἄγρα (“my name is Gout, she who comes to make feet my prey”). This type of anatomical enumeration of bodily parts affected by gout was found in Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who, as mentioned above, was a medical author roughly contemporary to Lucian and Galen. In Aretaeus’ SA, gout is grouped together with joint maladies (arthritis) and rheumatic diseases, which were in turn understood as the product of an excessive descent (rheuma) and subsequent congestion of humours in the joints. However, since this excessive

36 37

38 39

Galen’s insistence (Hipp. Aph. 18A. 42K) that the disease was a rare phenomenon in Hippocrates’ time (at p. 95). See, for instance, van Echteld et al. (2014). Καὶ ἔστι μὲν ἡ νοῦσος αὕτη τοῦ αἵματος ἐφθαρμένου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς φλεβίοισιν ὑπὸ χολῆς καὶ φλέγματος. “This disease is due to blood being corrupted by bile and phlegm in the blood vessels.” Nutton (2008). For rheumatism, arthritis and gout in Galen, see Lopez Ferez (1987).

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flow of humours could occur not just in the joints but also in any other part of the body, we are often met in medical literature with references to gouty paralysis, epilepsy, sciatica, even haemorrhoids and diarrhoea.40 In other words, although Greek and Roman medical texts discuss gout, which in most cases was not differentiated from arthritis,41 none of these definitions precisely matches our own ‘framing’ of the disease.42 Indeed, our modern biomedical model attributes gout to either abnormally high production or irregular retention of uric acid in the blood (hyperuricaemia),43 which in turn results in the formation of painful monosodium urate crystal deposits in the synovial fluid, thus causing inflammation and, in about fifty per cent of the sufferers, tophi (subcutaneous nodules) in the joint tissue, most commonly in the feet or knee. Hyperuricaemia may be caused by the kidneys’ defective capacity to excrete uric acid or may be brought upon by other extraneous reasons, such as blood diseases, in which case we speak of ‘secondary gout’. Although not lethal, hyperuricaemia can cause excruciating pain. All in all, both ancient and modern framings of gout underline its incurability, the concomitant sense of bodily disjointedness, and the extreme physical agony it causes. No wonder, then, that gout sufferers also turned to the gods.

5

Gout-Induced Pain and the Gods

The turning of the sufferers to the gods strongly recalls the passage quoted above (Pod. 117–124). The gout-affected joints of those initiated in Podagra’s Mysteries are described as being pierced deeply by a sharp, invisible, and secret arrow of pain. Their feet, knees, hip-joints, ankles, groins and thighs, hands, shoulder-blades, arms, elbows, and wrists are portrayed as eaten up, devoured, burnt, inflamed, and softened up during the springtime flare-ups. The only hope of the pain-stricken mystae lies with the same goddess who initiated the bouts of gout in the first place. They remain in the grips of pain “until the god40

41 42 43

See Copeman (1964), 1–144 for more references and examples from classical, post-classical and medieval medical authors; these ideas remained prevalent until pretty much the eighteenth century. E.g., Gal. Comp. med. loc. 13.331K. On Aretaeus’ grouping gout together with arthritis and sciatica, see above. On the socio-cultural ‘framing’ of diseases, see the introduction in Porter and Rousseau (1998). Cf. also Whitmarsh (2013) and King (2018), 115–127. On the relationship between gout and hyperuricaemia from a historical perspective, see MacKenzie (2015).

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figure 6.1 Imperial amulet depicting Perseus pursuing Podagra (obverse)

dess bids the pain to flee away” (μέχρις ἂν ἡ θεὸς τὸν πόνον ἀποφυγεῖν κελεύσῃ, Pod. 124). This last line is reminiscent of Greek protective incantations (epoidai) inscribed in amulets (phylaktēria, periapta) or on personal objects such as rings.44 In these incantations, podagra (“gout”) is usually personified and ordered to flee, as in the third-century ce amulet depicted in figure 6.1. On the obverse of the amulet, Perseus holds the head of Medusa and a harpē (ἅρπη, a type of sword with a sickle protrusion along one edge, near the tip of the blade). Perseus is depicted as flying in pursuit of gout, who is likely conceptualised as a monstrous Gorgon. The Greek inscription on the reverse reads: φύ[γε]/ ποδάγρα,/ [Π]ερσεύς σε/ διώχι (“Flee, Podagra, Perseus pursues you”). The amulet preserves a typical example of what Faraone calls “flee formulae”, that is formulae in which the illness is ordered to be gone by a figure of authority (for example, a god, goddess, hero or heroine).45 In fact, Lucian’s Pod. as a whole can be 44 45

Faraone (2009) and Zellmann-Rohrer (2015); cf. also Versnel (1998). Another good example of these “flee formulae” can be found in the so-called Philinna papyrus (PGM xx, 15–17): the document is made up of two fragments, P. Amherst 11 and P. Berol. 7504, where headache, this time, is personified and ordered to flee. More in Dickie (1994). On incantations and prayers on Greek amulets, see Kotansky (1991). On “flee formulae”, see Heim (1892), 465–576, Faraone (1996) and (2010), and Dasen and Nagy (2019). Faraone (2018, 210–211) reminds us that these formulas were not inscribed in amulets until the Roman and late antique periods. Incantations were used to fight all sorts of ailments in the Imperial Era. If we are to believe Alexander of Tralles (Therapeutics 11.1 = 2.475.4–15 Puschmann) reporting on Galen’s lost work On Medicine According to Homer (12.289K), Galen himself was said to have experimented with magical incantations containing Homeric verses and found them effective in the treatment of a scorpion sting and bones stuck in the throat. Now, Galen may not be as rational as once was thought— after all, in his On Simple Drugs (SMT. 6.3.10 = 11.859–860K) he mentions the case of an

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construed as a revisionist recasting of a flee-formula incantation. Instead of ordering the pain to go away, the sufferer needs to invite the pain in. Feeling the pain and fully embodying it seems to be the only way to escape. Moreover, Lucian recasts Podagra, the personification of the illness itself, in the role of the pursuer rather than in that of the fugitive. Podagra thus becomes the ultimate authority, who, like the Perseus depicted on the amulet, has the power to order the illness to flee and the pain to go away. These formulae were set in dactylic hexameters (often taken directly from the Homeric Epic), iambic trimeters, or prose (for example Heim no. 42: fleeformula in Latin against gout).46 Alexander of Tralles (2.581.22–25 Puschmann = Heim no. 152), a sixth century physician, preserves one such Homeric hexameter verse (Il. 2.95): τετρήχει δ’ ἀγορή, ὑπὸ δὲ στεναχίζετο γαῖα (“the agora was in disorder, and the earth was groaning underneath”). In particular, the magic incantation preserved by Alexander of Tralles orders the sufferer to engrave the Homeric verse on a gold lamella. Interestingly, one such golden lamella dated to roughly the third century ce was discovered in 1953.47 The golden leaf was rolled up, quite possibly ready for insertion into a tubular case, which was in turn to be worn by the gout sufferer, possibly very near to the afflicted body part. In his Philops. (7–8), Lucian reports a heated conversation concerning the efficacy of such amulets and incantations, which is closely linked to the wider debate over the benefits of applying external remedies to internal ailments. Soon enough, the focus of the discussion moves on to the treatment of rheumatic illness in the lower extremities (9) and we hear of a renowned magus from Babylon who cured Midas, yet another gouty man, by chanting an incantation and binding a fragment of the funerary stela, which belonged to a virgin, onto Midas’ gouty foot (11).48 Amulets were, of course, common practice in the Antonine Era and beyond, but in section 10 of Philops. Lucian confidently states that using amulets was an uncommon practice for Asclepius and his sons, the

46 47 48

epileptic child, who was cured by an amulet (periapton). Still, as Bouras-Vallianatos has rightly argued (2019, 49), “his [i.e. Galen’s] support for incantations in Alexander’s sense nonetheless seems unlikely, and the aforementioned Galenic work should most probably be considered pseudepigraphic”. Cf. also Jouanna (2011). Kontansky (1991); Collins (2008a) and (2008b), 208–223. It was acquired by Dumbarton Oakes in Washington in 1953. More in Ross (1965), no. 29 plate xxv, with Collins (2008b), 121–122. καὶ ἵνα μὴ διατρίβω λέγων, ἧκεν ὁ Βαβυλώνιος καὶ ἀνέστησε τὸν Μίδαν ἐπῳδῇ τινι ἐξελάσας τὸν ἰὸν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, ἔτι καὶ προσαρτήσας τῷ ποδὶ νεκρᾶς παρθένου λίθον ἀπὸ τῆς στήλης ἐκκολάψας. “Not to make a long story of it, the Babylonian came and brought Midas back to life, driving the poison out of his body by a spell, and also binding upon his foot a fragment which he broke from the tombstone of a dead maiden.” (Transl. Harmon).

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Asclepiadae.49 Lucian clearly contradicts, here, traditional views on the pluralistic character of remedies used by Asclepius and his sons.50 Pindar (Pyth. 3.47–54), for example, says that Asclepius frees bodies from bonds of every sort of pain, tending some with gentle incantations, giving others soothing pharmaka to drink or attaching pharmaka to their limbs from every side, and still others he cures by incisions (λύσαις ἄλλον ἀλλοίων ἀχέων/ ἔξαγεν, τοὺς μὲν μαλακαῖς ἐπαοιδαῖς ἀμφέπων,/ τοὺς δὲ προσανέα πί-/ νοντας, ἢ γυίοις περάπτων πάντοθεν/ φάρμακα, τοὺς δὲ τομαῖς ἔστασεν ὀρθούς). Amulets or no amulets, Asclepius was known as the last refuge of those who were plagued by incurable illnesses and insufferable pain.51 Gout sufferers were no exception to this rule. Our earliest epigraphic attestation of an individual who was cured from severe gout-induced pain by Asclepius can be found in the Epidaurian Iamata (no. 43), an inscription from Epidaurus (IG iv² 1, 122, ll. 132–133) dated to the fourth century bce.52 In a second century ce inscription from the Athenian Asclepieion (IG ii² 4514),53 yet another gouty man, a temple attendant (ζάκορος) named Diophantos,54 honours Asclepius for curing him of gout, which he calls “a painful incurable ailment” (ἀνίατον κακὸν ἕλκος, l. 23). Milena Melfi thought of this artful paean as performed at the Asclepieion in front of a wider audience.55 However, one may be tempted to imagine the re-enactment of Diophantos’ miraculous healing from gout as yet another private performance, perhaps in front of a small number of like-minded individuals who may have found them49

50 51 52

53 54 55

Lucian Philops. 10: ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ θεοὺς σέβω καὶ ἰάσεις αὐτῶν ὁρῶ καὶ ἃ εὖ ποιοῦσι τοὺς κάμνοντας ὑπὸ φαρμάκων καὶ ἰατρικῆς ἀνιστάντες· ὁ γοῦν Ἀσκληπιὸς αὐτὸς καὶ οἱ παῖδες αὐτοῦ ἤπια φάρμακα πάσσοντες ἐθεράπευον τοὺς νοσοῦντας, οὐ λεοντᾶς καὶ μυγαλᾶς περιάπτοντες. Cf. Aristoph. Plut. 653–747. See, for example, Wickkiser (2009), 58–61 and Renberg (2017), 22–24 and 175–176. Κιανὸς ποδάγραν. τούτου ὕπαρ χὰν ποτιπορευο[μένου δάκνων]/ αὐτοῦ τοὺς πόδας καὶ ἐξαιμάσσων ὑγιῆ ἐπόη[σε]. Trans. Edelestein: “… of Cios with gout. While awake he was walking towards a goose who bit his feet and by making him bleed made him well”. See also Renberg (2017, 176). Edelstein and Edelstein (1998, vol. 1), 242, n.428, Aleshire (1991), 111, Girone (1998), 31–35, Prêtre and Charlier (2009), 199–202. On zakoroi and neokoroi and their possible involvement to incubation rites in the Greek and Roman world, see Ricl (2011), and Renberg (2017), 228–229, n.281. Melfi (2010, 322): “This contains a tale of healing designed to be performed in a theatrical space, judging from its dramatic and metric structure. In the first part of the poetic text, the illness is described using apokrota, to suggest the supplicant’s limping walk; in the second part, more fluid dactylic hexameters are used to indicate the accomplished healing. Singing or reciting the paean would have resulted in a re-enactment of the miraculous healing, similar to those that took place, for example, in the Asklepieion of Rome on Tiber Island …”.

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selves convalescing at the temple. In that sense, Diophantos’ paean is not very different from Lucian’s comedic encomium of Podagra, which encapsulated and re-enacted in performance the miraculous healing of Podagros. However, more important for our purposes is the emphasis laid on the impact of the extreme and severe pain on the ‘lived body’ of those who suffered from incurable gout. Whereas prior to his miraculous treatment Diophantos perceives himself as “having no feet” (πόδας οὐκ ἔχων, l. 6), after the treatment he is said to be “healed from painful gout” (ἰασάμενος ποδάγραν κακήν, l. 14), “no longer appearing as crab-footed or as if walking on wild thorns” (οὐκέτι καρκινόπους ἐσορώμενος οὐδ’ ἐπ’ ἀκάνθας/ ὡς ἀγρίας βαίνων, ll. 24–25), and, finally, “sound of feet” (ἀρτίπος, l. 25). Diophantos seems to be experiencing his body as dysfunctional and fragmented prior to his treatment at the Asclepieion, and as functional and whole right after that.56 Almost two centuries later, the famous orator Libanius also sought therapy for his incurable gout at the Asclepieion of Aegae, this time by engaging in incubation by proxy.57 Podagra may not have been thought of as incurable by the literati of the first and second centuries ce,58 but it was experienced as such by the sufferers themselves. Whether theatrically re-enacted (for example Diophantos), comically subverted (for example Podagros), stoically tolerated (for example Fronto), or exorcised by extreme measures (for example Corellius Rufus’ suicide), goutinduced pain seemed to have been both acute and chronic, with a heavy impact on the lives of the individuals affected by it. In the words of Roy Porter and George Sebastian Rousseau, the authors of the definitive modern social history of the disease, “gout cannot be shrugged off as if it were a trivial complaint, an archaic disease, and ailment of the elite, a condition inconsequential because self-inflicted. Gout has been, and remains, a major cause of human suffering, and for that reason it is worthy of attention”.59 56 57 58

59

More on this in Renberg (2017), 23, n.70. Lib. Ep. 1300, 702–702 Foerster. E.g. Plin. NH 26.64.100–101. Unsurprisingly enough, the ever so modest Galen (On Recognising the Best Physician 10.5 Iskandar) includes gout in a long list of conditions a good physician (like himself) was expected to be able to treat with drugs and diet. Ancient medical treatises on gout remained in circulation in the Middle Ages. We often find them in popular manuals of diseases (essentially collections and/or compilations of medical literature), such as the eleventh-century manuscript known as the Salernitan text, or the Passionarius/Liber Nosematon/Book of Diseases, which was compiled by the physician Gariopontus of Salerno. It contains, among other things, two condensed adaptations of Caelius Aurelianus’ Acute Diseases and Chronic Diseases, which in turn were known in several early Latin manuscripts as Aurelius and Esculapius, and a short excerpt from Alexander of Tralles’ De Podagra. Porter and Rousseau (1998), 5. Emphasis is mine.

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References Abbreviations IG ii² Inscriptiones Graecae ii et iii: Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno posteriores, 2nd edn., Parts i–iii, J. Kirchner (ed). Berlin 1913–1940.

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Dasen, V. and Nagy, A.M. (2019) ‘Gems’, in D. Frankfurter (ed), Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic. Brill: Leiden, pp. 406–445. Derbyshire, S.W.G. (2017) ‘Pain and the Dangers of Objectivity’, in S. van Rysewyk (ed), Meanings of Pain, vol. 1. Cham: Springer, pp. 23–36. Dickie, M.W. (1994) ‘The Identity of Philinna in the Philinna Papyrus (“PGM²” xx.15; “SH” 900.15)’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100: 119–122. Edelstein, E.J. & Edelstein, L. (1998) Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, vols. 1 and 2. 2nd Ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins Universities Press. Faraone, C.A. (1996) ‘Taking the “Nestor’s Cup Inscription” Seriously: Erotic Magic and Conditional Curses in the Earliest Inscribed Hexameters’, Classical Antiquity 15: 77– 112. Faraone, C.A. (2009) ‘Stopping Evil, Pain, Anger, and Blood: The Ancient Greek Tradition of Protective Iambic Incantations’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 49: 227–255. Faraone, C.A. (2010) ‘A Greek magical gemstone from the Black Sea: Amulet or Miniature Handbook?’ Kernos 23: 79–102 Faraone, C.A. (2018) The Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gillet, G. (2017) ‘Neural Plasticity and the Malleability of Pain’, in S. van Rysewyk (ed), Meanings of Pain. Cham: Springer, pp. 37–54. Girone, M. (1998) Iamata: Guarigioni miracolose di Asclepio in testi epigrafici. Bari: Levante. Gourevitch, D. (1969) ‘Suicide Among the Sick in Classical Antiquity’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43: 501–518. Gourevitch, D. (1984) Le Triangle Hippocratique dans le monde gréco-romaine: le malade, sa maladie et son médecin. (Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 251). Rome: Ecole française de Rome. Jouanna, J. (2011) ‘Médecine rationnelle et magie: le statut des amulettes et des incantations chez Galien’, Revue des Études Grecques 124: 47–77. Karavas, O. (2005) Lucien et la tragedie. (Untersuchungen Literatur und Geschichte 76). Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Karavas, O. (2008) Λουκιανός. Ποδάγρα. Αθήνα: Δαίδαλος- Ι. Ζαχαρόπουλος. Keyser, P.T. (1997) ‘Science and magic in Galen’s recipes (sympathy and efficacy)’, in A. Debru (ed), Galen on pharmacology: Philosophy, History and Medicine. Proceedings of the vth International Galen Colloquium, Lille, 16–18 March 1995. Leiden: Brill, pp. 175–198. King, D. (2018) Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kotansky, R. (1991) ‘Incantations and Prayers for Salvation on Inscribed Greek Amulets’, in Faraone, C.A.& D. Obbink, D. (eds) Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–137.

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Lopez Ferez, J.A. (1987) ‘Rheumatism, arthritis and gout in Galen’, in T. Appelboom (ed), Art, History and Antiquity of Rheumatic Diseases. (Symposium Brussels, April 17–19, 1986). Brussels: Elsevier, pp. 84–86 and 123–124. MacKenzie, C.R. (2015) ‘Gout and Hyperuricemia: An Historical Perspective’, Current Treatment Options in Rheumatology 1: 119–130. Manuwald, G. (2014) ‘Tragedy, Paratragedy, and Roman Comedy’, in M. Fontaine & A.C. Scafuro (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 580–600. McGibbon, R. (2019) ‘How does it feel to … be a secret gout sufferer’, The Sunday Times Magazine (January 27): 40–41. McGuire, M.B. (1990) ‘Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the Human Body in the Social Sciences of Religion’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29: 283–296. Melfi, M. (2010) ‘Ritual Spaces and Performances in the Asklepieia of Roman Greece’, The Annual of the British School at Athens 105: 317–338. Ní Mheallaigh, K. (2014) Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nutton, V. (2008) ‘Rufus of Ephesus in the medical context of his time’, in P.E. Pormann (ed), Rufus of Ephesus: On Melancholy. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 139–158. Paz de Hoz, M. (2014) ‘Lucian’s Podagra, Asclepius and Galen. The popularisation of medicine in the second century ad’, in L.A. Guichard & J.-L. García Alonso & M. Paz de Hoz (eds), The Alexandrian Tradition: Interactions between Science, Religion, and Literature. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Land, pp. 175–210. Petridou, G. (2016) ‘Aelius Aristides as informed patient’, in G. Petridou & C. Thumiger (eds), Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 451–470. Petridou, G. (2017) ‘What is divine about medicine? Mysteric imagery and bodily knowledge in the Second Sophistic’, Religion in the Roman Empire 3(2): 242–263. Petridou, G. (2018a) ‘Laughing Matters: Chronic Pain and Bodily Fragmentation in Lucian’s Podagra’, Illinois Classical Studies 43(2): 488–506. Petridou, G. (2018b) ‘Resounding Mysteries: Sound and Silence in the Eleusinian Soundscape’, in G. Harvey and J. Hughes (eds), Sensual Religion: Religion and the Five Senses. Sheffield: Equinox, pp. 153–174. Petridou, G. (2020) ‘The “Lived Body” in Pain. Illness and Initiation in Lucian’s Podagra and Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi’, in V. Gasparini & M. Patzelt & R. Raja & A.-K. Rieger & J. Rüpke & E. Urciuoli (eds), Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 237–259. Petridou, G. (2021) ‘Mapping Medicine onto Mysteries in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi’, in N. Belayche &P. Massa & P. Hoffmann (eds), Les « mystères» au iie siècle de notre ère: un ‘mysteric turn’?, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences religieuses. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 217–242.

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Petzl, G. (1991) ‘Lukians ‘Podagra’ und die Beichtinschriften Kleinasiens’, Mètis 6: 131– 145. Porter, R. & Rousseau, G.S. (1998) Gout: The Partrician Malady: The Patrician Malady. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Prêtre, C. & Charlier, P. (2009) Maladies humaines, thérapies divines: analyse épigraphique et paléopathologique de textes de guérison grecs. Archaiologia. M. Villeneuved’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion. Raja, R. & Rüpke, J. (eds), (2015) A Companion to Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World. Malden & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Renberg, G. (2017) Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the GrecoRoman World, 2 vols. Brill: Leiden. Ricl, M. (2011) ‘Neokoroi in the Greek World’, Београдски Историјски Гласник Belgrade Historical Review ii: 7–26. Riddle, J.M. (1985) Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine. Austin: University of Texas Press. Rosenberg, C.E. & Golden, J. (eds), (1992) Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Ross, M.C. (1965) Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Mediaeval Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection: Jewelry, Enamels, and Arts of the Migration Period, vol. 2. Washington: The Dumburton Oakes Centre for Byzantine Studies. Rüpke, J. (2011) ‘Lived Ancient Religion: Questioning “Cults” and “Polis Religion”’, Mythos 5: 191–204. Rüpke, J. (2016) On Roman Religion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rüpke, J. (2018) Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Setti, G. (1910) ‘La Tragodopodagra di Luciano’, Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 38: 161–200. van Echteld, I. & Wechalekar, M. & Schlesinger, N. & Buchbinder, R. & Aletaha, D. (2014) ‘Colchicine for acute gout’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 8. van Nuffelen, P. (2014) ‘Galen, divination, and the status of medicine’, Classical Quarterly 63: 337–352. van Rysewyk, S. (2017) Meanings of Pain: Cham: Springer. van Rysewyk, S. (2019) Meanings of Pain, vol. 2: Common Types of Pain and Language. Cham: Springer. Várhelyi, Z. (2010) The Religion of Senators in the Roman Empire: Power and the Beyond. New York: Cambridge University Press. Versnel, H.S. (1998) ‘“καὶ εἴ τι λ[οιπὸν] τῶν μερ[ῶ]ν [ἔσ]ται τοῦ σώματος ὅλου […” (… and Any Other Part of the Entire Body There May Be …). An Essay on Anatomical Curses’, in F. Graf (ed), Ansichten griechischer Rituale. Geburtstags-Symposium für Walter Burkert. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, pp. 217–267.

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chapter 7

Perceiving and Diagnosing Pain according to Archigenes of Apamea Orly Lewis

1

Introduction1

In the late-first or early-second centuries ce the Rome-based physician Archigenes of Apamea claimed that different body parts, when damaged, evince different kinds of pain. For example: injured nerves manifest “toughly distended and impaled” pains; damaged flesh—“loose” pains; and the afflicted womb— “sharp spreading and pricking” pains.2 Although Archigenes’ works are all lost, verbatim citations in later authors reveal that he distinguished between dozens of pains experienced by patients.3 Some of the terms he uses for these pains are readily found in the works of other ancient authors and even in the modern pain questionnaires, such as pricking, sharp and heavy; others were less popular or even unique, such as salty, adherent, loose and sticky.4 Archigenes assigned these distinctions a crucial diagnostic value: he “believed that the affected parts are made evident from the difference in pains” (ἐκ τῆς τῶν ἀλγη-

1 In the process of preparing this paper I have benefited from funding from The Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 852550). I am grateful to the editors for their comments and patience. Thanks is due also to Sean Coughlin, Julien Devinant, David Leith, Peter N. Singer and John Wilkins as well as to audiences in Berlin, Tel-Aviv and Paris for their comments on earlier drafts (and see also notes 53 and 69). 2 Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2, 2.9.1 (Gärtner 330,8–9, 330,16, 352,22–23 = 8.91, 8.110K). The titles of Galen’s works follow the list in Hankinson (2005), 400–403, and are cited with reference to the nineteenth-century edition by Kühn (abbreviated as K) and the modern edition, when possible. 3 Over seventeen titles are attested in our sources for works by Archigenes, spanning subjects such as nosology, particular therapeutic methods, diagnostics and more. For a list and references see Mavroudis (2000), 54–149. 4 For a complete list of Archigenes’ terms see below Table 7.1. For references to other ancient authors, see Gärtner (2015), 678–679 and Roselli (2015), 62–67; for the McGill Questionnaire, see below, p. 156–157.

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μάτων διαφορᾶς ἡγούμενος δηλοῦσθαι τὰ πεπονθότα μόρια).5 In other words, he believed that by identifying the type of pain experienced by a patient, the physician would learn which part is affected and in need of treatment. These claims and distinctions of Archigenes received vehement criticism from the physician Galen of Pergamum (second-third centuries ce), who is our main source for Archigenes’ ideas and methods concerning pain diagnosis. Galen argued that Archigenes’ method and terminology concerning pain are impractical, as they are obscure and alien to the descriptions offered by patients and based on theory alone.6 While the content of Galen’s citations and reports seems reliable, Galen often presents this content out of context and in a critical and biased manner. Working in Rome shortly after Archigenes, Galen considered the highly active followers of Archigenes among his main rivals and he argues relentlessly against the ideas and methods of Archigenes concerning different parts of the medical art.7 Despite Galen’s clear bias against Archigenes, modern scholars have generally accepted Galen’s criticism and considered this ‘pain-based’ diagnostic method of Archigenes as theoretical and lacking an empirical basis. It is not surprising, therefore, that while Galen’s arguments against Archigenes have been discussed in detail, there has been no close study of Archigenes’ method and terminology as such.8 As a result, important evidence for Greco-Roman diagnostic methods and conceptions of pain has been overlooked. This paper aims to fill this gap by shifting the focus to Archigenes’ method and terminology and its implications as regards clinical practice, the role of patients in the diagnostic process and the narration of their pain as well as the broader theme of Roman conceptions of pain. My assumption is that Archigenes’ distinctions of pains were intended as a practical method of diagnosis during the clinical encounter, rather than as a theory or classification of pain. My aim is to understand how this diagnostic method was supposed to work in practice, and how physicians could have made use of it. This chapter is not

5 Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.2.1 (Gärtner 306,19–20 = 8.70K). For a similar claim by Galen see ibid. 2.1.4 (Gärtner 306,13–15 = 8.70K), cf. Gärtner (2015), 670–672. For the concept of ‘affected part’ in Greco-Roman medicine and its practical significance, see Gelpke (1987); van der Eijk (1998), 349–351; McDonald (2012), Lewis (2020), 36–40. 6 Pigeaud (1985), 39–48; Roselli (2015), 57–62; Roby (2016), 307–318; King (2018), 83–88. 7 On Archigenes see: Mavroudis (2000); Lewis (2018), 143–175; and eadem (2022) on Galen’s arguments against Archigenes. On Alexander of Tralles’ attitude towards Archigenes, see Bouras-Vallianatos (2016), 382–396. 8 King (2018) and Gärtner (2015) offer some recent considerations, though limited in scope due to the broader context of those studies. On Galen’s criticism see Pigeaud (1985), Roselli (2015), and Roby (2016), and below, pp. 158, 162.

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intended as an exhaustive analysis of Archigenes’ pain terminology and diagnostic method as regards pain; it intends, rather, to demonstrate that there was a solid foundation guiding this method and to offer a key for understanding his terminology, its relation to empirical phenomena encountered in patients and a new perspective for studying them further. I will argue that the terminology Archigenes uses to describe pain does not always aspire to reflect inherent properties of the pain itself but refers to other sensations and physical phenomena which the patient is experiencing or the physician himself is observing. Archigenes, I will claim, considered pain in an inclusive manner, which took into account anatomical and physical observations as well as theoretical assumptions. In so doing, Archigenes’ method gave the physicians a more active role in identifying and representing patients’ pain and released them from complete dependence on the patients and their subjective and often unreliable pain narratives. As I shall show, understanding the underlying method and diagnostic significance of Archigenes’ classification of pain contributes not only to our understanding of the theory and medical method of this physician, but also to our understanding of ancient diagnostics as a whole. It also sheds light on the relation between theory and practice in ancient medicine and the emergence of technical terminology. Moreover, and importantly for the present volume, it deepens our understanding of ancient conceptions of pain by revealing an additional manner of conceptualising and narrating pain and of observing and interpreting pain on a practical level in the course of the diagnostic procedure. It brings to light a conception which incorporates into the perception and narrative other sensations and processes in the patients’ body and experience of the discomfort. It also suggests that physicians shaped ancient pain narratives not only as authors who set them down in writing but also as active composers at the bedside. I begin with an overview and overarching analysis of Archigenes’ distinctions and terminology of pain as regards his language and organization of this diagnostic information and I briefly compare his terminology and method in light of ancient and modern terminology and diagnostic narratives of pain. In section 3 I discuss the practical application of Archigenes’ list of pains in the clinical encounter through a close discussion of specific examples. I then proceed, in section 4, to consider the underlying empirical observations and anatomical-physiological conceptions which his method and terminology reveal.

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Archigenes on the Pains of Different Parts

Our core material consists of two verbatim citations from Archigenes’ work On the Affected Parts (Περὶ τῶν πεπονθότων τόπων) in which he lists the pains characteristic to different parts. These citations appear in book two of Galen’s diagnostic work with the similar title On the Identification of the Affected Parts (Περὶ διαγνώσεως τόπων πεπονθότων). Much of the book consists of Galen’s commentary-like discussion of these passages from Archigenes and in the course of this discussion Galen offers further relevant evidence.9 I cite these passages in full in order to maintain the list-format in which Archigenes presents the pains of different parts. I then extract the pain terminology and present it in two converse manners: (i) according to the individual terms or phrases in both Greek and English and (ii) according to the body part. With this overview it is possible to appreciate the kinds of terms and expressions that Archigenes’ method applied and to bring to light their relation to other narratives and conceptions of pain. The first passage, from Galen’s chapter 8 runs as follows (body parts are underlined) (T1): [2] He [sc. Archigenes] writes the following, and I quote: “the vessels [sc. in the head—perhaps near the temples], when they are squeezed firmly, repress headaches that are unaccompanied by inflammation, because it is as if some kind of falling into them is prevented; the barbaric bandaging,10 in particular, accomplishes this. Cutting these [vessels], especially the artery, curbs the mortifying one-sided headaches. [3] And when this [artery] is leading [sc. first to be affected], it presents (ἐμβάλλει) a pulsating and shooting pain, and [the artery] has a light tremor and becomes conspicuously round, just like the veins become varicose, as it were, whereas the nerves distend and harden when they are condensed. And these [nerves] carry (ἐπιφέρει) pains which are numb and toughly distended, deep and impaled, full (on account of narrowness) and are the least diffused. [4] The membranes manifest (παρέχουσι) those [pains] which spread widely and are irregular, so that the roughness of the sensation has something akin to the tingling sensation in the teeth as well. The surface and the membranes between the flesh,11 which carry (ἐπιφέρουσι) also 9 10 11

In addition, there are some mentions of Archigenes’ reference to pain scattered in other works of Galen and in other authors. For the possible nature of this kind of bandaging, see Gärtner (2015), 735–736. Probably different fasciae surrounding and connecting fleshy parts throughout the body.

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the ripping pains, often hurt in this manner. And you will find the [pains] from the [membranes] near the bones12 to be adherent, so that it seems that they are from the bones themselves. [5] And the veins cause those [pains] that are heavy, downward-drawing and evenly clogged up. And flesh carries (ἐπιφέρουσιν) those [pains] which are diffused and loose. It is clear therefore, that they [sc. the pains] do not stretch out extensively, since the sensation swims, it seems, in some roughness. [6] Muscles are a mixture of the particular properties of flesh and nerve, and doubtless also of artery; when in pain, they rise, since they swell, as one may say, and extend so as to produce cavities, and they pulsate numbly. [7] Of all others, it is the wound-like pain and in wounds the faintly sharp [pain] and not least the rather sweet [pain] as well as the itch-provoking [pain] which appear on the surface; and the pricking [pain] in the depth. The fixed [pain occurs] when a hollow closes; and the piercing pain indicates, at times, that something in that place is affected, but at other times that it is not [affected], since it [sc. the pain] does not hold a stand in the depth. The pain which attacks hollows is tearing.” (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.1–2)13 According to Galen “this passage of Archigenes, in which he tries to teach, how someone may find the affected parts by turning their attention to the difference in pains,” is taken from Archigenes’ first book of On the Affected Parts.14 It follows upon Archigenes’ criticism of Asclepiades of Bithynia’s claim that in arthritis it is not the nerves but the adjacent flesh, which senses the pain on account of being pressed (θλιβομένην).15 Galen does not cite Archigenes’ criticism but the reference at the beginning of the cited passage to compressed (ἐπιθλιβόμενα) vessels which may inhibit pain, seems to be connected to his reply to Asclepiades and his claim that compressed parts feel pain rather than block it. Be that as it may, I do not think that Archigenes’ descriptions of the pains manifested in the arteries and nerves are limited to cases of pains in the head. It is rather a description of how these inner parts are affected under certain conditions and the painful sensations they manifest. Pains in the head are used as the immediate context, but the pains described most likely represent 12

13 14 15

Probably the ligaments, which connect bones to one another and often seem to tightly “envelope” joints, and perhaps also the tendons, which connect muscles to bones; both tendons and ligaments look like broad bands to which Archigenes may have easily referred to as “membranes”. This would indicate that Archigenes generally reserved the term neuron for nerves and referred to ligaments and tendons as “hymenes”. Gärtner 330,2–24 = 8.90–92K. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.3 (Gärtner 330,25–332,1 = 8.92K). Ibid. 2.8.1 (Gärtner 328,25–330,2).

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the general case of pains in arteries and nerves. Some support for this interpretation is offered by the continuation of the passage: Archigenes lists the pains in veins (section 5 of the passage), but he does not list arteries and nerves;16 and he describes the pains in the muscles, which are made of artery and nerve, in terms similar to the pains of arteries and nerves described in section 2 of the passage.17 Galen cites the second passage in chapter 9, after commenting on the previous citation (T2): The pain of the liver is drawing, ingrown and numb and is nestled there rather stubbornly. The pain of the spleen is not sharp, but it possesses a weight and at the same time distension, for it is similar to that which stretches itself against some pressure and squeezing applied from outside. Kidneys carry (ἐπιφέρουσι) tart pains and stabbing [pains] with a continuous constriction. The bladder suffers badly from contracting pains and pricking [pains] with distensions. The womb suffers sharp, shooting, pricking and distended pains, which occur in a colic-like manner; such a mixture naturally hurts, since it brings about (ἐμποιεῖ) a deficiency in the particular property [of the part]. (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.1)18 In another passage, Galen mentions select terms used by Archigenes, many of them found in the direct citations as well as three additional ones, namely: “salty” (ἁλυκός), “sticky” (γλίσχρος) and “stubborn” (ἀτειρής).19 Galen offers no information regarding Archigenes’ claims concerning these kinds of terms— his point in this passage is rather to stress the problems in terminology20— hence, we do not know in which body parts Archigenes thought these pains 16 17 18 19

20

The reference to varicose veins in section 2 of the citation is for the sake of comparison, to help explain the meaning of arteries which “become round”. I am grateful to David Leith for pushing me to think more closely about the context of this passage. Gärtner 352,17–24 = 8.110K. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.6.1 (Gärtner 326,8–11 = 8.87K); Archigenes uses ἀτειρής in adverbial form in the case of the liver (ἀτειρέστερον ἐγκείμενος—“nestled rather stubbornly”). The other pains mentioned in this passage from chapter 6 are: “drawing” (ὅλκιμος), “tart” (αὐστηρός), “sweet” (γλυκύς), “faintly sharp” (ἰσχνῶς ὀξύς). These pains, says Galen, “it is not only impossible to recognise when they happen, but also not possible to grasp when they are mentioned” (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.6.1 [Gärtner 326,9–10 = 8.87K]). What Galen is saying is that these terms are impractical and incomprehensible (the two things are of course related): a physician would not be able to identify a “bitter”, “sour” or “salty” pain nor could he understand what it is supposed to mean or refer to, when the term is used.

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occured. Nevertheless, Galen’s accurate rendering of the other terms in this passage, including the compound “faintly sharp”, lends credibility to his claim that the additional terms, that is, those which do not appear in the verbatim citations, are also from Archigenes. These passages reveal a multitude of terms:21 table 7.1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Kinds of Pain according to Archigenes and the Body Parts in which they occur

Translation

Greek

Body part

Adherent Colic-like Contracting Deep Diffused Downward-drawing Drawing Evenly clogged up Faintly sharp Fixed Full on account of narrowness Heavy Holding weight and distention Impaled Ingrowing Irregular Itch-provoking Loose Mortifying (Gangrenous?) Nestled rather stubbornly Numb Piercing Pricking / Jabbing

προστυπής στροφωδῶς στύφων βύθιος κεχυμέννος καθέλκων ὅλκιμος ὁμαλῶς ἐμπεπλασμένος ἰσχνῶς ὀξύς ἐνερείδων στενοχωρίας πλήρης βαρύς βάρος δ’ ἅμα καὶ διάτασιν ἔχει ἐμπεπαρμέννος ἐμπεφυκώς ἀνώμαλος προσαγωγός χαλαρός σφακελώδης ἀτειρέστερον ἐγκείμενος ναρκώδης διακεντῶν νυγματώδης

Membranes (from bones) Womb Bladder Nerves Flesh / Nerves Veins Liver Veins Surface / Wound Liver Nerves Veins Spleen Nerves Liver Membranes Surface / Wound Flesh Head(ache) Liver Nerves / Liver Hollows Depth / Bladder / Womb

21

In his list of terms used by Archigenes with respect to pain, Gärtner (2015), 726–727 lists also: βίαιος (“forceful”), διαλείπων (“intermittent”), ὁμαλός (“even”), στρυφνός (“sour”), τονώδης (tensed, cf. LSJ, s.v. τονώδης for the ascription to Archigenes). However, all these terms appear in Galen’s comments, and nowhere does he explicitly claim that they derive from Archigenes. This might be implied for στρυφνός in two cases (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.6, 2.9 [Gärtner 326,21, 360,7 = 8.88, 8.116K]) but the ascription to Archigenes remains uncertain even there.

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lewis Kinds of Pain according to Archigenes and the Body Parts in which they occur (cont.)

Translation

Greek

Body part

24 Pulsating 25 Ripping

σφυγμώδης διασπῶν

26 27 28 29 30

ἁλυκός ὀξύς διαΐσσων ἐπὶ πλάτος διήκων ἐπινύσσων μετ’ ἐμμόνου σφίγξεως γλίσχρος ἐκτεινόμενος ἀτειρής γλυκύς αὐστηρός σπαράσσων (σκληρῶς) διατείνων ἑλκώδης

Artery Surface / Membranes between flesh (--) Womb Artery Membranes Kidneys

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Salty Sharp Shooting Spreads widely Stabbing with continuous constriction Sticky Stretching out Stubborn Sweet Tart Tearing (Toughly) Distended Wound-like

(--) (--)22 (--) Wound / Surface Kidneys Hollows Nerves Surface (muscles?)

In addition to such adjectives and participles qualifying the noun “pain”, Archigenes uses more complex descriptions of uncomfortable sensations related to pain (from T1 and T2): (a) “The roughness of the sensations is akin to the tingling sensation in the teeth” (αἱμωδιᾳ προσειοκὸς ἔχει ἡ τῆς αἴσθησις τραχύτης) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2)23 (T1) (b) “The sensation swims, it seems, in some roughness” (ἐμπλεούση τραχώμασί τισι δοκεῖν τῆς αἴσθησις) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2)24 (T1) (c) “Similar to that which stretches itself against some pressure and squeezing applied from outside (holding weight and distention)” (ἀντεντεινομένῳ πρὸς ἔνθλιψιν καὶ ἀποπίεσίν τινα ἔξωθεν ἐπικειμένην ἐοικώς [βάρος δ’ ἅμα καὶ διάτασιν ἔχει]) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.1)25 (T2) 22 23 24 25

This qualification is expressed with a negative: “does not stretch out extensively” (μηδ’ ἐπὶ πολὺ ἐκτεινόμενος). Gärtner 330,11–12 = 8.91K. Gärtner 330,17 = 8.91K. Gärtner 352,19–20 = 8.110K.

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He also refers to physical changes associated with pains in particular parts: (a) Artery “has a light tremor and becomes conspicuously round” (στρογγύλλεται ὑποφρίττουσα ἐπισήμως) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2)26 (T1) (b) Veins “become varicose-like” (οἷον ἀποκιρσοῦνται) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2)27 (T1) (c) Nerves “distend and harden when they are condensed” (διατείνεταί τε καὶ σκληρύνεται συστρεφόμενα) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2)28 (T1) (d) “Muscles when in pain rise, since they swell, as one may say, and extend so as to produce cavities, and they pulsate numbly” (μύες … ἐν τοῖς πόνοις ἀναφέρουσιν σφριγῶντες, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, καὶ μετ’ εὐρυχωρίας διατεινόμενοι καὶ ναρκῶδες σφύζοντες) (Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2)29 (T1) table 7.2

Artery Bladder Depth Flesh

Head Hollow Kidneys Liver Membrane

26 27 28 29

Body Parts and the pains they cause according to Archigenes

pulsating, shooting, light tremor, becomes round διαΐσσων, σφυγμώδης, στρογγύλλεται ὑποφρίττουσα contracting, pricking (with?) distensions στύφων, σὺν διατάσεσιν νυγματώδεσιν Pricking νυγματώδης loose, diffused, (not extensively stretched), the sensation seems to swim in some roughness χαλαρός, κεχυμένος, (μηδ’ ἐπὶ πολὺ ἐκτεινόμενοι) ἐμπλεούσης τραχώμασί τισι δοκεῖν τῆς αἰσθήσεως one-sided, headache, mortifying ἑτεροκρανία, κεφαλαλγία, σφακελώδης fixed, tearing, piercing ἐνερείδων, σπαράσσων, διακεντῶν tart, stabbing with a continuous constriction αὐστηρός, ἐπινύσσων μετ’ ἐμμόνου σφίγξεως drawing, ingrowing, numb, nestled rather stubbornly ὅλκιμος, ἐμπεφυκώς, ναρκώδης, ἀτειρέστερον ἐγκείμενος spreads widely, irregular, roughness of sensation akin to haimōdia ἐπὶ πλάτος διήκων, ἀνώμαλος, αἱμωδιᾳ προσειοκὸς ἔχει ἡ τῆς αἴσθησις τραχυτης

Gärtner 330,6–7 = 8.90K. Gärtner 330,7 = 8.90–91K. Gärtner 330,8 = 8.90K. Gärtner 330,17–20 = 8.91K.

154 table 7.2

lewis Body Parts and the pains they cause according to Archigenes (cont.)

Membrane between flesh Membrane near bones Muscle (= artery + nerve + flesh) Nerve

Spleen

Surface

Vein Womb

ripping διασπῶν adherent, so that seem to be from the bones themselves προστυπής, ὡς αὐτῶν δοκεῖν τῶν ὀστέων ὄντας pulsate numbly, rise and swell and extend, creating cavities ναρκῶδες σφύζοντες, ἀναφέρουσιν σφριγῶντες, καὶ μετ’ εὐρυχωρίας διατεινόμενοι numb, toughly distended, deep, impaled, least diffused, full (on account of narrowness) ναρκώδης, σκληρῶς διατείνων, βύθιος, ἐμπεπάρμενος, στενοχωρίας πλήρης not sharp, holding weight and distention (similar to that which stretches itself against some pressure and squeezing applied from outside) οὐκ οξύς, βάρος δ’ ἅμα καὶ διάτασιν ἔχει (ἀντεντεινομένῳ πρὸς ἔνθλιψιν καὶ ἀποπίεσίν τινα ἔξωθεν ἐπικειμένην ἐοικώς) ripping, wound-like; in wounds—faintly sharp, rather sweet, irritating (of an itch) διασπῶν; ἑλκωδης; ἰσχνῶς ὀξύς, γλυκύτερος, προσαγωγός (κνησμοῦ) heavy (varicose-like), downward-drawing, evenly clogged up βαρύς (οἷον ἀποκιρσοῦνται), καθέλκων, ὁμαλῶς ἐμπεπλάσμενος sharp, shooting, pricking, distended—(all) occurring in a colic-like manner ὀξύς, διαΐσσουσι, νυγματώδεσι, διατείνουσιν, ἐμπίπτουσι στροφωδῶς

Looking at the terms and phrases several points are evident. 1. Most terms listed in Table 7.1 (23 of 38) are adjectives qualifying the noun “pain” (πόνος, ἄλγημα); of these, most appear on their own, though some are qualified by adverbs (for example “faintly sharp”, “evenly clogged up”) or other forms of speech (for example “full on account of narrowness”, “pricking with distensions”). 2. Of the rest, many (seventeen in total) are participles which also qualify the noun “pain”, most of them in active form (though one of these is intransitive—ἐνερείδων, fixed) and five in middle-passive. Some of the participles are qualified with an adverb or prepositional phrase, which usually concern motion or location (e.g., ἐπινύσσων μετ’ ἐμμόνου σφίγξεως —stabbing with a continuous constriction, ἐπὶ πλάτος διήκων—spreading widely). 3. Two terms (ἑτεροκρανία, κεφαλαλγία) are compound nouns, both with local qualifications (“skull”, “head”). One attribute is expressed in terms

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of “possession” (ἔχει), namely of “weight and distension”, both of which are used elsewhere in the list in their cognate forms as an adjective attribute for pain (“heavy”, “distended”). 4. In several cases we find a qualification of pain in terms of a simile or comparison. Five of the adjectives are of the -ωδης form (ἑλκωδης, ναρκώδης, νυγματώδης, σφακελώδης, σφυγμώδης—literally: “wound-like”, “numblike”, “dot-like”, “gangrene-like”, “pulse-like”). The “-like” suffix is not always required in translation, and we may simply say “numb” or “pulsating” pain. However, it is important to bear in mind the etymology denoted by the suffix when considering these terms: the likeness is not simply metaphorical or conceptual, but can also be ontological, that is, a visual or perceptual likeness.30 So pulse-like implies a visual similarity to the motion of the pulse—a repeated expansion and contraction or up-anddown motion, although it is not the pulse motion itself, but something that looks like it or reminds us of it. In other cases, the simile or comparison are expressed in a more complex way (and are not listed in Table 7.1), with reference to what “seems to” or is “similar” or “akin” to (δόκει, ἐοικώς, προσειοκὸς). 5. Some of the terms are related to taste (for example, “sweet”, “salty”) or texture (“sticky”), many refer to spatial location or motion (“nestled”, “deep”, “shooting”, “spreads widely”, “downward-drawing”, “diffused”).31 6. Only two terms (κεφαλαλγία, ἑτεροκρανία) refer to an actual part of the body: “the head” (κεφαλή) and “skull” (κρανιόν) respectively. These terms and phrases may all be considered pain narratives of sorts. For even if they are very brief, they all represent accounts of pains, some in a vivid, almost story-telling form and many with reference to some actual activity, as it were (for example, a ripping, pulsation). Moreover, Archigenes describes the pain of parts by means of several terms or phrases, rendering a more complex narrative. When considering the passages as a whole we note that the distinctions and narratives are organised in lists according to the body part. This organising principle, which suggests a highly practical aim, is common in ancient nosological texts but is unique in the extant discussions of pain.

30 31

See Herbert W. Smyth (1920), 833a. Gärtner (2015), 678–682 distinguishes three labels in his list of Galen’s pain terminology: intensity, time and sensory. The terms in the McGill Questionnaire discussed below (p. 156), are divided by experts into four classes: sensory (groups 1–10), affective (11–15), evaluative (16), and miscellaneous (17–20), and medical literature makes further distinctions in pain terminology (e.g., traction pressure versus punctuate pressure).

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However, in its content—its use of adjectives, participles, and similes as well as many of the individual terms he uses—it is far from alien to the ancient context and to the broader cultural perspective of pain narratives. Despite Galen’s fierce criticism, some of the terms and attributes which Archigenes uses are found in the works of writers which predate or are fairly contemporary to him, including in Galen himself. I discuss some parallels in the next section and Gärtner offers comprehensive lists of parallels.32 Before examining the practical application of Archigenes’ terminology, I want to consider here briefly some modern comparisons. The McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) invented in 1975 by Roland Malzeck is a famous modern example of a list of kinds of pains which is still used, in various forms, in medical practice.33 The main part of the questionnaire lists almost one hundred adjectives and participles (including some we find in Archigenes) organised in twenty groups, each consisting of between four to six words. Patients are requested to choose no more than one word from each group. They are also asked about the intensity of the pain at that point of time and about its location. Each term has a value (unknown to the patient) and the sum of the values of the terms chosen by a given patient is called the Pain Rate Index; it indicates to the practitioner the scale of the patient’s pain. Moreover, different scores (that is, different Pain Rate Indexes) are considered indicative of different kinds of pathological processes. In other words, the questionnaire proposes a way to move from verbal qualitative descriptions to a quantified scale and these qualifications also assist in indicating the kind of ailment affecting the patient. The MPQ is more common today in its short form, but there, too, the main component is a list of fifteen sensory and affective adjectives (for example, throbbing, stabbing, heavy, sickening) whose intensity the patient must rate.34 Other methods and questionnaires for assessing

32

33

34

For some examples see the table in Gärtner, Galeni, 678–682, which lists Galen’s terms alongside references to other authors, including Archigenes. Further references can be found in the respective commentary notes to the two citations from Archigenes in Gärtner, Galeni, 732–750, 780–784. For a comprehensive description of the Questionnaire, its development and changes see Katz and Melzack (2011), 45–66. The terminology in the questionnaire was based on observations and questioning of patients—Melzack (1975), 278–282. Interestingly, the questionnaire has been adapted to different cultures, but studies have shown that people from different cultures describe their pain in similar terms in their respective languages—for a list of the translated versions and related bibliography see Katz and Melzack (2011), 50. Melzack (1987).

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the pain of patients incorporate a quantitative aspect or an assessment of its effect on functionality, but the qualitative, verbal description is still significant.35 As in Archigenes’ lists, such questionnaires yield pain narratives which are complex and composed of several terms, reflecting the idea that a patient’s pain cannot be distilled to one quality or sensory experience. In the case of Archigenes, it is not entirely clear whether he is claiming that every instance of pain in the parts includes all the qualities he lists for each part, or whether the pain of the womb, for example, could sometimes be only shooting or only distended. The use of the “and … and” (καί … καί …) or “both … and …” (τε καί) suggest that all qualities appear together, but this is not a conclusive indication. The reference to several qualities for many of the parts probably had a practical utility in helping to disambiguate the source of the pain (see below, p. 160). These multifaceted descriptions may reflect not only the multitude of sensations experienced by the patient, or the diversity of sensations narrated by different patients, but possibly also represent the combination of both patients’ and doctors’ roles in producing the narrative. The qualitative distinctions of pain are not without significance on their own accord also in the modern diagnostic practice. The sensory distinctions experienced and reported by patients are considered nowadays to be related to and indicative of distinct internal chemical, mechanical or physical processes (nerve injury; pressure on muscles; inflammation; infection etc.) and medical literature and practitioners explain at times the physiological causes of many of these qualities of pain in minute detail. As always, caution is required when comparing ancient medicine with modern medical theory and practice. My point in drawing attention to these modern examples is twofold. First, to show that we should not rush to accept Galen’s criticism that terms which Archigenes uses, and which Galen does not accept, are necessarily irrelevant for diagnosis. Second, to present an illustrative example for a collaborative effort of patient and doctor in producing the terminology and narrative of the patient’s pains and the possible influence of the physician on the patient’s description of his or her pain. The modern patients are presented with a list of terms with which they are asked to describe their pain. These terms may have originally stemmed from patients, but in the current diagnostic encounter they become the physician’s words,

35

See for example Fink (2000) and Kuhlmann, Teo, Olesen, Phillips, Faghih, Tuck, Afghani, Singh, Yadav, Windsor, Drewes (2021) concerning the COMPAT and WILDA methods respectively.

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which the patient must use to express his/her pain. I turn now to a closer look at the narratives offered by Archigenes and to the joint role of patient and physician I recognize in them.

3

Clinical Method and Application

The pressing question regarding Archigenes’ method and discussion of pain is how it was supposed to work in practice: to what did these terms refer in reality, that is, in the patient’s body or experience? How was the physician expected to know which kind of pain the patient is suffering from, or which kind of pain the physician himself is witnessing in the clinical case at hand? An important part of Galen’s criticism is his claim that patients would never use many of the terms listed by Archigenes.36 This may indeed be true. However, it would not, I argue, undermine Archigenes’ method. On the contrary, as I shall show, his terms and descriptions did not aspire to rely on the patients’ narrative alone; they offered, rather, a means to release doctors from complete dependence on the patients and their often confused or deliberately confusing observations and narratives.37 My claim is that Archigenes’ method rested on an inclusive conception and description of pain, which incorporated other indicators perceived by either the patient or the physician, by either their senses or reason. Archigenes’ distinctions of pain go, I argue, beyond the subjective sensory experience of the patient, and particularly beyond the painful sensory experience, to encompass additional sensations experienced by the patient, as well as additional internal and external signs or changes observed or assumed by the physician. The pain descriptions in Archigenes’ lists are the result of both the patients’ subjective narrative and the physicians’ observation skills. The qualities he lists, whether as adjectives, participles, or more complex phrases, are not always conceived as or meant to reflect inherent properties of the pain itself, but rather additional processes, phenomena, or sensations. I distinguish two main categories of ‘additions’: (i) sensations experienced by the patient together with pain; (ii) 36 37

Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.11–13 (Gärtner 358–360 = 8.115–116K), cf. King (2018), 85–87, Roby (2016), 312–317. Galen’s treatise How to Detect Malingerers is an illustrative testimony to the unreliability of patients in Imperial Rome (including in relation to pain—ibid. 19.1–2, 6–7K), as are some of the patient cases he describes in his works, for example, Prognosis by Pulses 1.1 (9.218– 220K), On Prognosis 7 (Nutton 104–110 = 14.635–641K). He discusses the problem also in his discussion of pain and Archigenes: Loc. Aff. 2.7.2 (Gärtner 328,4–12 = 8.88–89K) and see Roby (2016), 313–314.

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changes inside the patient’s body or on its external surface, which the physician either (a) observes by his senses (and of which the patient may or may not be aware) or which the physician (b) assumes or concludes are taking (or have taken) place based on his professional knowledge and experience.38 I should stress that I do not think that Archigenes himself had classified pains according to these categories. I offer this division as an explanatory and conceptual framework for understanding Archigenes’ diagnostic method as regards pain. The distinction I propose is not an attempt for a comprehensive classification of Archigenes’ pain terminology either and I do not claim these categories to be exhaustive. My aim in this analysis is to explain and demonstrate the underlying concept of Archigenes’ distinction between pains and the practical diagnostic method it implied, rather than to identify Archigenes’ original classification, if he had offered one at all. 3.1 Pain Described in Terms of Accompanying Sensory Experiences In the category of accompanying sensory experiences, I include pains such as: heavy, ripping, numb, drawing, itch-provoking, adherent, tearing, pulsating. To illustrate my claim regarding these kinds of pain I will focus on two examples: the numb and heavy pains. Archigenes used the expression “numb pain” (ναρκώδης πόνος) with reference to pains originating in the nerves or liver. The adjective ναρκώδης is derived from the noun νάρκη (narkē), which means numbness, hence my translation as “numb pain”, or literally: “numb-like pain” (see above, p. 155, for the translation of such adjectives). This term is found in various writers around the time of Archigenes, such as Plutarch and Aelius Aristides, and even Galen uses it.39 It is still used today in the Mcgill Questionnaire (and distinguished from “dull”, which, together with obtuse is another, mostly outdated, rendition of the Greek ναρκώδης) and was used widely in early modern medical writings. Galen, despite using it himself a few times, argued strongly against the attribute ναρκώδης to describe pain. Numbness, he states, is a particular kind of diathesis, condition, and thus cannot be used to qualify pain. In other words, a numb pain is not really a type of pain, he argues, but a mixture of pain and numbness—two different conditions or sensations.40

38 39

40

On the use of senses and reason in diagnosis see: Jouanna (1999), 291–303; García-Ballester (1994), 1651–1667. Plut. Sulla 26.3 (p. 408 Perrin); Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales 2, 305,16 and see King (2018), 134–135; for Galen, for example, Loc. Aff. 2.8.19 (Gärtner 344,1–2 = 8.102K), On Hippocrates’ ‘Aphorisms’ 6.5 (Savino 94,22–96,3 = 18A.16K), where it is a distinct type (ἰδέα) of pain. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.2.2, (308,8–11 = 8.71K).

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This, however, was exactly Archigenes’ point, I believe, when he spoke of a “numb pain”. By numb pain he meant cases in which the patient complained not only of pain in a certain area or part of his body, but also of a numb-like sensation—a sensation akin to numbness. Presumably, if it occurred in the right abdomen it could point to the liver as the source of pain. We should bear in mind here the difficulty of identifying the source of abdominal pain, especially without intrusive diagnostic methods: I might say that I have pain in my right abdomen, but I would not know, and neither would my doctor definitely know without intrusive technological examinations, whether it is my liver that is affected, or rather my appendix, gall bladder, intestines or simply my abdominal muscles.41 Archigenes’ method means that identifying this particular type of pain in the patient—especially if it appears together with other types which he lists for the liver (such as “ingrown” pain etc.)—could help disambiguate the patient’s condition and the source of his/her pain. If it was felt in other areas of the body, for instance in the head, it would have indicated for Archigenes, and anyone using his method, that the patient has some problem in his nervous system.42 Such a description and conception of pain in terms of an accompanying sensation experienced by the patient is not alien to ancient medical literature. An illustrative example is the case of heavy pain. Archigenes uses the term “heavy pain” (βαρὺς πόνος) with regard to pains arising on account of the veins; and in the case of the spleen he speaks of a pain which “holds heaviness”, that is, “holding weight”—βάρος ἔχει.43 The term occurs frequently in a range of authors.44 Galen, too, adopts it, and points to Hippocrates’ use of it in verbal or prepositional phrases: a pain which “possesses” or “holds weight” (βάρος ἔχει) or a pain “with weight” (μετὰ βάρους). Galen’s explanation of this usage is particularly telling for our present purpose. In his commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms Galen explains that the author gave the name βαρεῖα ἡ ὀδύνη (“heavy pain”) to cases in which the pain “brings on [ἐπάγουσαν] a sensation (αἴσθησιν) as if (οἷον) some weight is lying upon (βάρους τινὸς ἐγκειμένου) that place”.45 As Galen explains it, and as the phrases 41

42 43 44 45

See for example: Cartwright and Knudson (2008), 971–978; Purysko, Remer, Leão Filho, Bittencourt, Lima, Racy (2011), 927–947. Cf. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.10.10–14 (Gärtner 370–372 = 8.124–146K) on diagnosing problems in the right abdomen. See below, p. 170, on the question of the relation between the pain of “parts within parts”. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2, 2.9.1 (Gärtner 330,15, 352,19 = 8.91, 8.110K). See the references in Gärtner (2015), 679. Interestingly, a list of symptoms of sinusitis on the website of one of Israel’s main hospitals includes “a sensation as if a weight is pulling the head down”—the Hebrew word used for weight is (‫ משקולת‬mishkolet), which means a weight in the sense of an actual object used in a scale or in the gym. “Sinusitis: Causes and Treatment,” Rambam Health

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in the Hippocratic works imply, the term “heavy pain” is another way of expressing the combination of a sensation of pain and a sensation of heaviness—the heaviness in such cases is what Galen and other later authors would call a ‘synaisthesis’. The term refers to a co-sensation occurring together with another condition or sensation and perceptible to the doctor or patient.46 In the case of ‘heaviness’ this sensation would be apparent to the patient, who could use it to qualify the general statement that she/he is in pain. A reference to Archigenes in a later source indicates that he recognised that heaviness and pain are distinct phenomena. When discussing flatulence (pneumatosis) Archigenes begins by stating the following (T3): παρέπεται δὲ τοῖς πάσχουσι στομάχου βάρος καὶ διάτασις, καὶ σοφίζεσθαι τοὺς πολλοὺς εἰς αὐτὸν μόνον ἐρείδειν τὴν ὀδύνην. Heaviness and distension of the stomach47 accompany those suffering [from pneumatosis] and it deceives many [leading them] to locate the pain only in it [sc. the stomach]. (Aët. Amidenus, Medical Books 9.27) Archigenes is distinguishing here between the location of the pain (ὀδύνη) and that of the heaviness and distension. This indicates that, like Galen, he identified pain and the other uncomfortable sensations as distinct and independent phenomena. Archigenes, however, incorporates these accompanying sensations into his terminology of pain, when they occur together with pain and in the same part. But this terminological meshing does not mean that he does not distinguish between the phenomena. He combines them linguistically in particular cases but not ontologically and invariably.

46

47

Care Campus, last modified 1.10.2007: rambam.org.il/departmentsandclinics/surgicaldivi sion/entandheadandnecksurgery/articals/sinusitis_cause_treatment.aspx (last accessed: 30.4.2023). See particularly Galen, On the Therapeutic Method 13.2, (10.875K): a burning inflammation and pain occurring “with a co-aisthesis of pulsation” (μετὰ σφυγμοῦ συναισθήσεως); Agathinus apud Galen, Differences of Pulses 4.11 (8.750K): pulse as a co-affection occurring to the patient during inflammation; Aët. Amidenus, Medical Books 8.50 (Olivieri 482,7–8): “a coaisthesis of heaviness sits in the areas of the stomach” (βάρους συναίσθησις περὶ τὴν γαστέρα συνεδρεύει). The Greek term synaisthesis (“co-aisthesis”) should not be confused with the modern term ‘synesthesia’, on which see below, n. 53. Stomachos often meant oesophagus or the cardia—the place where the oesophagus opens into the stomach. Neither meaning seems entirely fitting here (and a few lines later the cardia is mentioned by another term commonly used for it: “the mouth of the stomach”). Moreover, in a later passage Archigenes refers to the plados (abundance of water) of the stomachos, in which case stomach again seems to be the most reasonable meaning.

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Further support for my interpretation of this category of terms reflecting accompanying sensations relates to the case of the “pulsating pain” (σφυγμώδης πόνος), which Archigenes lists as a pain caused by the arteries. In this case the additional sensation of pulsation may be observed by both physician and patient. Galen notes that “all physicians” speak of the “pulsating pain”.48 And Galen himself speaks of pain “with some pulsation” (μετὰ τινος σφυγμοῦ), demonstrating that the phenomenon of pain accompanied by a perceptible sensation of pulsation was not alien to him.49 My interpretation of this group of terms also offers an answer to Galen’s criticism that no patient speaks in these terms.50 Archigenes’s method does not require patients to say “numb pain” or “itch-provoking” pain. It suffices for a patient to mention that it itches in the area which is also painful, or that (s)he has a numb-like sensation in that part, for Archigenes to apply this term and for another physician using Archigenes’ list to determine that this is the kind of pain present in the patient he is treating. If we consider this from the perspective of pain narration, “numb pain” or “itch-provoking pain” may very well be simplified narrative representations scripted by the physician, but they are drawn directly from the patients’ more complex narratives, such as “I have a pain in my arm and the area feels itchy”. 3.2 Pains Described in Terms of Phenomena Perceived by the Physician In this group I include pains such as salty, irregular, tart, sticky, toughly distended, evenly clogged up, full on account of narrowness, colic, mortifying. I will explain this group through the case of ‘flavour pains’: “salty” (ἁλυκός), “sweet” (γλυκύς), “tart” (ἀυστηρός),51 which raise significant difficulties. Galen criticises Archigenes’ use of these terms on the account that they refer to flavours, which are perceived and experienced by the sense of taste, while pain is a sensation experienced through the sense of touch. Hence, says Galen, these terms cannot be used to describe pain.52 My interest lies in Archigenes’ intention and

48 49 50 51 52

Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.4 (Gärtner 332,19–20 = 8.93K). Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.3.1–7 (Gärtner 312,7–316,5 = 8.75–79K). See references in n. 36 above. From Galen’s comments it appears that also the “contracting pain” is considered one of taste (Gärtner 356,18–358,2 = 8.113–114K), cf. Gärtner, Galeni, 585, n. ad 274,2 στύφουσαν. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.8, 2.9.11 (Gärtner 356,14–358,4, 358,22–27 = 8.113–114, 8.115–116K) cf. King (2018), 84–85, Roselli (2015), 58–62. This criticism of Galen against Archigenes with respect to confusing terms related to different senses is a topos for his arguments against Archigenes (cf. Galen, Diff. Puls. 3.6, 8.680–682K) though, as we shall see shortly (pp. 165–166, below), he is not so critical when discussing a case in Hippocrates which betrays a similar “confusion of senses”.

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thought in using these terms: what did he mean by them? Why did he choose them and how did he identify and distinguish such pains? How were other physicians supposed to do so? One way to understand such terms is as metaphors.53 By this I mean that these terms, which were more commonly associated with foodstuffs and the experience of taste sensed by the tongue, is transferred (μεταφέρειν) and applied to the realm of pain and of sensations which are not experienced by the tongue.54 Galen suggests such an interpretation in the case of the sweet pain, which would then mean a “weaker” (ἀσθενέστερον), “fainter” (ἀμβλύτερον), or “less troubling” (ἀνιαρὸν ἧττον) pain.55 He makes no suggestion regarding other terms, but other sources may offer possible meanings. For example, αὐστηρός, “tart”, was often used to mean “severe” or “austere”, as with reference to character or literary style, thus transferring the meaning beyond the immediate sensory experience.56 Metaphorical use is found also in cases where the transfer of meaning is ‘closer’ to the realm of pain in so far that the taste term is applied to other sensations, perceived however by the sense of touch rather than by that of taste. For example, some may term an itching or irritating (ὀδαξησμόν) haptic sensation as “salty” because this is the kind of sensation that salt and other salty bodies cause upon contact.57 Indeed, ancient authors often attempt to describe and explain tastes in terms of the haptic sensation they caused in the mouth

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Some have suggested to me that the condition known as synaesthesia could be the explanation, that is, cases in which a stimulus of one sense leads a person to experience an immediate perception through another sense (e.g., perceiving smells as or in terms of colours). However, pain-flavour synaesthesia is extremely rare (Sean A. Day, “Types of Syn,” accessed June 16, 2020, http://www.daysyn.com/Types‑of‑Syn.html) and has received hardly any discussion in literature (it is not discussed in Simner and Hubbard [2013]). We cannot dismiss the possibility that the phenomenon was more common in antiquity, or that Archigenes or one or more of his patients experienced such synesthesia, but this seems a less likely explanation that the one I propose. I thank Giouli Korobili, Inbar Graiver, Ed Reno and Ben Belek for discussing this possibility with me. Galen criticises Archigenes for being too metaphoric in his pulse terminology since he transfers the meaning of a term too many times (Diff. Puls. 3.6, 8.5 = 672–680K); he refers to this in Loc. Aff. as a parallel to Archigenes’ unclear pain terminology (2.9.17, Gärtner 362–364 = 8.119–120K). For metaphors in scientific terminology, see Lloyd (1989), 172–214. Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.29 (Gärtner 348,21–22 = 8.107K). For “sweet pains” in a positive or softened sense see Sophocles, Electra 1145, Fragments 374, Philo, On Mating with the Preliminary Studies 29(166). For example: Plutarch, Lycurgus 25, Cato the Elder 7, Alexander 5; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition, 22. Gal. Hipp. Epid. 6.1.29 (Wenkebach 47,3–6 = 17a.877.12–15K). This would be an explanation for the “unclear” (asaphes) reference, as Galen calls it, to “salty fevers” in the Hippocratic text (ibid. Wenkebach 46,21–23 = 17a877,1–3K).

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and their tangible powers and effects (δυνάμεις) on materials with which they come into contact.58 In such contexts αὐστηρός is usually described in terms of its roughness or smoothness and a drying capacity. In some cases it is the term for things that are “less rough” in texture (that is, smoother) to the touch or the tongue (in contrast to those which are rougher and which are described as στρυφνά).59 In the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, however, it is considered as rough or causing roughness (τραχυντικός).60 Theophrastus describes it as a sensation which can cleanse or scour liquid, drying and coagulating it.61 One could argue as to how metaphorical such descriptions are, or in which direction the metaphor was first used. For in a sense, such statements attempt to offer common, objective explanations and descriptions for terms that refer to subjective experiences. The difficulty and equivocal manner in rendering the different terms for taste in translation (“sour”, “tart” and “dry-wine” are only some examples used in modern English translations for αὐστηρός) reflect such subjectivity and the need for defining a common more objective sensation. The descriptions of Plato, Theophrastus, and Galen attempt to explain the terms describing taste by reducing them to tactile sensations whose common, equal assessment appear easier. If we apply this kind of interpretation to Archigenes’ use of taste terms, we will understand his use to be similar to that which I suggested for “numb” and “heavy” pains, namely cases in which patients describe additional, nongustatory sensations, which either they or the doctors label as “salty”, “tart” and so forth. So, a salty pain would be one in which the patient senses, in addition to pain, also an itchy or irritating sensation as if salt were touching them; a “tart” sensation one in which some roughness or perhaps dryness is sensed in addition to pain. While this remains a possibility, I would like to suggest a different interpretation, one which is more straightforward, and which would have allowed physicians to evaluate and determine the type of pain independently and with reference to a phenomenon more tangible than a patient’s inner sensation. We may explain these types of pains, I propose, as referring to the secretions observed by the examining physician. “Salty”, “tart”, “sour”, “sweet” and so forth 58

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This was of practical clinical importance with regard to the effects of foodstuffs and other substances in pathological or therapeutic contexts. See, for example, Rudolph (2017) and Wilkins (2021) for insightful discussions. I am grateful to John Wilkins for sharing his work with me in advance and to him and Peter N. Singer for discussing Galen’s ideas on tastes and their effects, though it is not possible to incorporate all of their rich insights here. Plato, Ti. 65d; cf. Gal. On the Powers [and Mixtures] of Simple Drugs (11.446, 11.638K). Aristotle, Problems 3.13, 872b35–36. Theophrastus, On the Causes of Plants 6.13.

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were all commonly used to describes different types of secretions in Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial sources.62 The close connection between the fluids and tastes is inherent in the Greek language: the term χυμός meant both “juice” (or “humour”) as well as “taste”. These different types of fluids are described in our texts as distinctively perceptible and identifiable by smell and taste— either by the patient him/herself, or by the physician; either accidently (as in the case of sputum rising to the mouth and hence tasted by the patient) or intentionally (the physician tasting or smelling the secretions of patients).63 On this reading, Archigenes’ label of “salty pain”, for example, refers to cases in which the patient complained of pain and at the same time he/she, or the physician, observed salty secretions from the body. Support for this interpretation is available in a passage from the Hippocratic Epidemics and Galen’s comment on this passage. The Hippocratic author, writing about fevers, describes a similar method to the one I am suggesting and Galen in his commentary praises it as superb to all other distinctions. The Hippocratic passage lists different types of fever. Among these we find fevers that are “sharp” to the touch, or “fiery” or “bubbly” alongside the “very-red” (ἐξέρυθροι), “very-pale” (ἔξωχροι) and “livid” (πελιοί). Galen writes the following (emphasis mine) (T4): νῦν οὖν ὁ Ἱπποκράτης τὰς διαφορὰς τῶν πυρετῶν γράφει, ὅσαι διαγινώσκονται τοῖς ἰατροῖς οὐκ ἐξ ὧν οἱ κάμνοντες λέγουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ὧν αὐτοὶ διά τε τῆς ἁφῆς καὶ τῆς ὄψεως ἐναργῶς αἰσθάνονται. Hippocrates wrote the distinct types of fevers which are identified by doctors not from the things the patients say, but from the things which they themselves [that is, the doctors] perceive clearly through touch and sight. (Gal. Hipp. Epid. 6.1.29)64 Especially telling for our purpose are the references to the different colours— very-red, livid and very-pale. These are clearly objects of the sense of sight rather than touch, by which fever and heat is usually perceived and assessed.

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For humours and blood named or distinguished in terms of tastes see for instance: Hippocrates, Ancient Medicine 14.4 (Jouanna 136,10–12 = L.1.604), cf. Schiefsky (2005), 230–232; Plato, Timaeus 82e; Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.11 (Gärtner 358,26–27 = 8.116K), Causes of Symptoms 1.6 (7.124K), Powers of Foodstuffs 1.31 (Helmreich 374,20–23 = 6.730–731K). Smelling and tasting were stressed in diagnostic theory but applied in practice to a lesser extent than sight and hearing. Jouanna (1999), 300–303, García-Ballester (1994), 1654, 1657. Wenkebach 44,10–13 = 17a.872K.

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Rather than criticising such cross-sense attributes, Galen proceeds without reservation to explain these types of fever by reference to the visual observations of the skin colour and complexion—its χρόα. Galen directly connects them, moreover, with the causal pathological process (T5): οἱ δὲ ἐξέρυθροι, τουτέστιν οἱ σφοδρῶς ἐρυθροί, σφοδροτάτην μὲν ἐμφαίνουσι τὴν θερμασίαν, τὴν δ’ ὕλην αἷμα, καθάπερ οἱ ἔξωχροι τὴν ὠχρὰν χολήν. Those [in fever] who are very-red are those who are extremely red … and that the matter [sc. in which the fever originated] is the blood; just as the very-pale show that it is the pale humour [in which the fever originates]. (Gal. Hipp. Epid. 6.1.29).65 So, the passage in Hippocrates is accepted even by Galen as classifying and distinguishing the distinctive types (the diaphorai) of one physical phenomenon—fever in this case—not only with reference to intensity or tactile sensation (with which it is commonly and naturally connected) but with reference to additional perceptible signs or phenomena which occur to the patient and are observed by the physician through the sense of sight.66 To sum up, in light of the common use in Greco-Roman medical sources of ‘taste terms’ to refer to actual fluid substances, I propose two meanings for the taste terms in Archigenes’ pain descriptions: (i) These terms indicate a nongustatory sensation associated with the humoural substances represented by these terms; this would be a case where the physician himself terms the pain as salty, sweet and so forth based on his understanding of the humoural effects he identifies in the patient’s body or experience; (ii) Observation of such humours by the sense of taste or other senses; in such cases either the patient or physician might speak of these tastes, even if the patient would not use the terms salty or sweet pain as such. 3.3 Significance of Archigenes’ Method and Approach From the material available to us, it is apparent that Archigenes’ distinction between different pains was not a classification of types of pain as such, not a diairesis into classes and distinctive types (διαφοραί). It is a practical list describ-

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Wenkebach 54,13–15 = 17a.887K. Cf. Galen’s reference to inflammation which is not simple but with a “raw-causing humour” (Loc. Aff. 2.8.24, Gärtner 346,21–22 = 8.105K). Accordingly, Archigenes’ reference to a pain which feels like it is swimming in some roughness, may refer to cases in which such a humour causing a raw sensation is present and effective.

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ing which pains, or combination of pains, are related to which body part. It is a list of parts and the pains associated with each of them, implying a practical rather than theoretical aim and use.67 His method, in other words, was based on the idea that there is a correlation between particular uncomfortable sensations or externally perceptible processes and phenomena, on the one hand, and particular parts of the body, on the other. For practical use what physicians really needed is the following list: column i: (combination of) pains; column ii: body part (a converse version of Table 7.2 above).68 In this way, once they had identified the types of pain present in their patients, they could identify the affected part. Grouping under conceptual labels such as ‘sensory’ and ‘qualitative’ would not have offered any practical value for Archigenes and other physicians and Archigenes’ lists reveal no ambition at grouping different manifestations of pains according to any such external and conceptual criteria. His attempt and wish to match a distinctive sensation or combination of sensations to a particular anatomical origin demonstrates the importance he awarded to pain as a diagnostic indicator. It also testifies to the challenge of identifying the exact anatomical source of pains felt by patients, a challenge which justified new approaches and the setting out of new tools and methods. The identification of the affected part, the one in which a pathological process is taking place, was essential for determining the appropriate course of treatment. Still a challenge in modern medicine, it was even more challenging in an age in which one could not examine internal body parts without harming the body. There were no ECG, X-Ray or Ultrasound instruments. Archigenes’ approach and solution was to include in his lists of pains that physicians may encounter in their patients, additional sensations or other phenomena accessible to the senses or reason of the patient or physician. For Archigenes it was not enough, at least for diagnostic purposes, to simply say ‘pain’. The basic semantic unit, as it were, with which a physician worked or at least strove to work was ‘pain+x’ rather than just ‘pain’. The pain of the patient in practice is not considered and described in isolation, rather, its description already entails the cause or the accompanying sensation or phenomena present in the patient’s body.69 As noted above, this is not to say that the physicians did not distinguish

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Galen does a similar thing, in fact, when listing the conditions (diatheseis) of different parts and the pulses associated with them in Praes. Puls., books 3–4 (9.330–340K). The first two books of that work (9.205–329K) are the converse list: the kinds of pulses observed in patients and the conditions they indicate. Similar to what Galen does in his first two books of Praes. Puls. (see previous note). I thank Gadi Elgazi and Orna Harari for suggesting this point. This is of importance also in light of Archigenes’ description of pulses in terms of the qualities accompanying them

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these phenomena as distinct from pain (that is, that they can occur separately and have their own characteristics), but that they realised that these distinct sensations or phenomena were often difficult to disentangle in practice, that is, in the patient’s experience or in the physicians examination and observations. And hence, that when speaking about the patients’ pains it was more practical, or at least not confusing, to use a terminology expressing the phenomena or sensations accompanying the pain.

4

Anatomy and Physiology Informing Archigenes’ Descriptions of Pain

4.1 Analogy and Imagery Archigenes’ lists of pains betray further observations made by physicians and incorporated into the descriptions of pain. For instance, in the case of the spleen the pain involves a tension “which is similar to that which stretches itself against some pressure and squeezing applied from outside.”70 This seems to reflect a palpation of the area indicated as painful by the patient (presumably the upper left abdomen near the spleen) during which the physician passes his fingers over the area, presses and squeezes it and feels a kind of tension underneath—perhaps a swelling of the spleen and/or tautness of the skin. Other descriptions reflect a relation to the structure and nature of the respective body part. The pulsating-like (σφυγμώδης) pain assigned to the arteries, is a case in point: these are the vessels that pulsate constantly, and the pain presumably entailed the sensation of repeated pulsating-like motions, which in some cases might have been observed by sight or touch from outside too. The “heavy” (βαρύς) and “downward drawing” (καθέλκων) pains of the veins could be related to the idea that these are the haematic vessels and are thus burdened with a large amount of blood. In the case of the nerves the connection is clearly expressed: after noting that nerves which are condensed are “distended and hardened” (διατείνεταί τε καὶ σκληρύνεται), he describes the pains of such nerves as not only numb but also “toughly distended” or “distended in a hard manner” (σκληρῶς διατείνων). The “tearing” pain (σπαράσσων) of the “hollows” (κόλποι), that is, fistulae or other kinds of unnatural hollows, could reflect the unnatural separation—the tearing—of one part from another which results in such

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(Gal. Diff. Puls. 2.4; 8.576–577, 8.578K) and Galen’s criticism of him as being unable to conceptualise a phenomenon without its accidental qualities (ibid. 2.7; 8. 607–610K, especially 8.609–610K). Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.1 (Gärtner 352,19–20 = 8.110K).

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hollows. The combination of sensations characteristic of the pain in muscles mirrors the muscles’ composite structure which Archigenes describes: they are “a mixture of the particular properties” of flesh, nerve and artery.71 “When in pain they rise, since they swell … and extend so as to produce cavities, and they pulsate numbly.”72 The numb pulsation points to the arterial (that is, pulsating) and nervous (that is, the part causing numb pains) properties of muscles; the creation of cavities reflects, perhaps, the fleshy component which can stretch and expand. These descriptions all seem to rest on some mental image and conception of what occurs inside the body—processes which might or might not have been perceptible to the patient (for example, the tearing)—but they rest also on externally perceptible features of the parts (such as the swelling of the spleen, the hardening of nerves and the pulsating-like motions of the arteries).73 4.2 Different Levels of Composition I want to draw attention to one final point, namely Archigenes’ distinct and explicit reference to, and consideration of, different structural levels in the clinical diagnostic method. Although in the material available to us Archigenes does not use the Aristotelian and Galenic terminology of ὁμοιομερής (“uniform” parts) and its opposites ὄργανα and ἀνομοιομερής/ἑτερομερής (“organs”, or “nonuniform” parts),74 he nonetheless demonstrates that he had some concept of distinct levels of anatomical construction. His description of the muscles as a “mixture” (μίγμα) of artery, nerve and flesh is most illustrative; and his reference to the womb as a “mixture” (μίγμα) is another indication, though more cryptic.75 Moreover, one can recognise a difference in the kinds of parts listed in each of the two verbatim passages cited earlier in full: in T1 Archigenes mostly lists the pains of parts known as “unified” (arteries, nerves, membranes, flesh), in T2 pains associated with organs (liver, spleen, kidneys, bladder, womb). Admittedly, the two lists do not entirely correspond to such a division. “Hollows” (κόλποι) and muscle, which are listed in T1, seem to be an exception. The 71 72 73

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According to Galen Archigenes should have included vein and membrane in this mixture too (Loc. Aff. 2.8.25 [Gärtner 346,25–26 = 8.105–106K]). Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2 (Gärtner 330,18–20 = 8.91K). For similar connections between structure and the nature of the painful sensation cf. Galen’s comments in Loc. Aff. 2.8.16, 2.8.20, 2.8.23 (Gärtner 340,24–25, 344,11–20, 346,11– 16 = 8. 101, 103–104, 104–105K); King (2018), 79–80. Aristotle, Parts of Animals 2.1, 646a20–24; Galen, On the Elements according to Hippocrates 8–9 (De Lacy 126 = 1.479–481K). Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.8.2 (Gärtner 330,17–19 = 8.91K) (muscles) and 2.9.1 (Gärtner 352,23–24 = 8.110K) (womb).

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hollows in question are not parts as such, but pathological conditions: these are not cavernous, hollow organs, such as the bladder or womb, whose pains are described differently in chapter 9, but rather pathological cavities occurring in (soft?) tissue. Moreover, the muscles are explicitly described by Archigenes as composed (they are a “mixture”) of other parts. It is possible that the passages may have originally appeared as one in Archigenes’ work and that it was Galen who split them. However, when introducing the second passage, Galen states that he is moving (μεταβῶμεν) to “another passage” (ἑτέρα ῥῆσις), implying a division in the original work.76 Be that as it may, Archigenes’ list of the underlying parts such as arteries and membranes seems exhaustive, whereas the list of organs excludes organs such as heart, lungs, or stomach. Perhaps Archigenes mentioned them in another passage which Galen simply did not cite. It is not entirely clear how the underlying parts affect the pain once they are combined into organs. In the case of muscles, we have seen, there appears to be a close relation and effect on the dimensional and physiological behaviour of the organ. But it is less clear to what extent the pains of the womb, bladder or liver are determined by the respective ratio and combination of the underlying parts inside them. On the face of it, it seems, that on the organic, complex level, it is the ‘combined final outcome’, so to speak—that is, the shape and structure of the organ itself—which determines the kind of pain, rather than the individual underlying parts inside it. This also means that from a clinical perspective, the particular pain which points to the liver, for example, does not necessarily point to underlying parts of the liver which are affected (for example, its flesh or the veins inside it)—for that, each has its own kind of pain, to indicate its injury. Closer research into the anatomy of these parts according to Archigenes will hopefully shed light on this question.77 What can be said more confidently, is that these distinctions of pains in both levels of composition demonstrate that for Archigenes, medical practice and the physician’s work were not limited to the viscera; parts such as arteries, membranes, flesh, veins, and nerves were explicit objects of diagnosis and presumably treatment as well.78 76

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Gal. Loc. Aff. 2.9.1 (Gärtner 352,16–17 = 8.110K). Galen often notes when he is citing subsequent passages, for example in the case of Archigenes’ pulse work (Gal. Diff. Puls. 2.7 [8. 602–603, 606–607K]). Galen’s concept of primary and secondary diseases may offer some useful insights when investigating the relation between the pains in the unified and non-unified parts in Archigenes’ theory. This is an idea which we find later in Galen, with his classification of kinds of conditions which can affect organs and those which can affect uniform parts: MM. 2.6 (10.125–126K) and in detail in Differences of Diseases, especially chapters 3–6 (7.841–856K).

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Conclusions

There is still much to study on Archigenes’ ideas and methods regarding pain; however, our journey thus far allows us to draw out several important insights. Archigenes’ lists of parts and their pains was intended as a practical diagnostic method assisting physicians in identifying which part in the patient’s body is affected and requires medical attention. Archigenes’ method indicates that physicians did not always trust their patients’ ability to indicate the ailing place—either because the sensation lacked a clear focal point; or because the physicians feared that patients might be insincere in their descriptions; or simply because physicians knew that there is an objective difficulty in describing the exact internal source of a pain, even if the patient points to a particular location from the outside. His method reflects an assumption that patients can sometimes more easily describe other sensations they are feeling than name the exact nature of the pain they are experiencing. Archigenes’ method offered aids and information for physicians to assess the pain of patients and their overall condition—it allowed physicians to rely not only on a patient’s often limited, confused or misleading descriptions, but also on their own ‘professional’, ‘informative’ and supposedly objective examination and observation. Both physician and patient participate in identifying or characterising the pain; even if it is not always certain whether the particular pain term is referring to perceptions made by the physician or the patient, the physician is active not simply by asking questions, but also by observing a variety of other signs which the body of the patient provides him. Pain did not work in a vacuum, of course—there were other signs which helped the physician identify the essence and source of the problem and determine the most suitable treatment. Nevertheless, pain had a particularly important role in Archigenes’ view in these processes of diagnosis and therapeutics. If my interpretation is correct and Archigenes’ terminology was more than simply metaphorical or theoretical, then his method and terminology reflect a different, more inclusive, way of observing pain in the clinical sphere. This perception may have gone beyond the physician’s frame of mind—it may have reflected a patient’s perception of pain as an experience entailing not only discomfort as such, but also additional sensations and bodily changes. This is different from the conception presented in Galen’s writings (and generally more accessible to modern readers), in which pain is (usually) described as explicitly distinct and isolated from other distressing sensations. This means that the Romans of Archigenes’ time had a broader way of thinking about pain and conceptualising it, one which needs to be explored further and considered in the study of ancient perceptions and experience of pain.

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prehensive Pain Assessment Tool Short Form for Chronic Pancreatitis: Validity and Reliability Testing.’ Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, 20(4), e770–e783. Lewis, O. (2018) ‘Archigenes of Apamea’s Treatment of Mental Diseases’, in P.N. Singer & C. Thumiger (eds), Mental Diseases in Ancient Medicine. Leiden: Brill, pp. 143–175. Lewis, O. (2020) ‘The Clinical Method of the Anonymous of Paris’, in P. BourasVallianatos (ed), Exploring Greek Manuscripts in the Library at Wellcome Collection in London. London, New-York: Routledge, 25–54. Lewis, O. (2022) ‘Galen against Archigenes on the Pulse and what it Teaches us about Galen’s Method of Diairesis’, in M. Havrda & R.J. Hankinson (eds), Galen’s Epistemology: Experience and Reasoning in Ancient Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197–201. Lloyd, G.E.R. (1989) The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science. Berkely: University of California Press. Mavroudis, A. (2000) Ἀρχιγένης Φιλίππου Ἀπαμεύς. Ὁ βίος καὶ τὰ ἔργα ἑνὸς Ἕλληνα γιατροῦ στὴν αὐτοκρατορικὴ Ῥώμη. Athens: ’Akadīmía ’Athīnō̂n, Kéntron e̓kdóseōs é̓rgōn Hellīń ōn syggraféōn. McDonald, G.C. (2012) ‘The Body and Space the “locus affectus” in Ancient Medical Theories of Disease,’ in P.A. Baker, H. Nijdam & K. van’t Land (eds) Medicine and Space: Body, Surroundings and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 61–83. Melzack, R. (1975) ‘The McGill Pain Questionnaire: Major properties and scoring methods’, Pain 1 (3): 277–299. Melzack, R. (1987) ‘The short-form McGill Pain Questionnaire’, Pain 30(2): 191–197. Pigeaud, J. (1985) ‘Rhétorique et médecine chez les grecs. Le cas d’Archigène’, Helmantica 36: 39–48. Purysko, A.S., Remer, E.M., Leão Filho, H.M., Bittencourt, L.K., Lima, R.V., Racy, D.J. (2011) ‘Beyond Appendicitis: Common and Uncommon Gastrointestinal Causes of Right Lower Quadrant Abdominal Pain at Multidetector CT’, RadioGraphics 31 (4): 927–947. Rambam Health Care Campus. ‘Sinusitis: Causes and Treatment.’ Accessed December 10, 2021. Last edited October 1 2007: https://www.rambam.org.il/?catid=%7B2191 2330‑2753‑49d0‑96ce‑6746c547307d%7D&itemid=%7B4624bfb6‑6351‑4817‑94e8‑9 27d52529f99%7D. Roby, C. (2016) ‘Galen on the Patient’s Role in Pain Diagnosis: Sensation, Consensus, and Metaphor’, in C. Thumiger & G. Petridou (eds), Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Brill: Leiden, pp. 304–324. Roselli, A. (2015) ‘Come dire il dolore. Galeno e il linguaggio dei medici e dei malati’, Antiqvorvm Philosophia 9: 55–68. Rudolph, K. (2017) ‘Tastes of reality: Epistemology and the senses in ancient philosophy’, in K. Rudolph (ed.), Taste and the Ancient Senses. London: Routledge, pp. 45– 59.

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Schiefsky, M.J. (2005) Hippocrates on Ancient Medicine. Leiden: Brill. Simner, J. & Hubbard, E. (eds) (2013) Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smyth, H.W. (1920) A Greek Grammar for Colleges. New York: American Book Company. Wilkins, J. (2021) ‘Taste and the senses: Galen’s humours clarified’, in M. Bradley, V. Leonard & L. Totelin (eds), Bodily Fluids in Antiquity. London: Routledge, pp. 210– 223.

chapter 8

Between Aristotle and Stoicism: Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Varieties of Pain Wei Cheng

1

Introduction1

Pain is a universal and substantial part of human existence. If something harmful or threatening happens to our body or mind, we as sentient animals tend to undergo, and sometimes cannot avoid feeling, pain in everyday life. There are, however, various puzzles about such an experience, scientific as well as philosophical, concerning its essence, classification and meaning. Philosophers of all ages have tried to understand it, from ancient Greece to our own time. Modern philosophers have been accustomed to treating pain as a paradigm case of sensation or what is called quale, using it to illuminate the nature of mind and its relation to body. Modern approaches, however, never characterize pain as a simple, unique phenomenal quality, but are inclined to take pain as a whole range of unpleasant or negative experiences encompassing different bodily motions, sensations, motivations, evaluations, and more variation besides. The relevance of pain, accordingly, is by no means restricted to theories of mind or consciousness, but its clarification also contributes to ethics and other practical matters. It is especially the complex nature of pain and its connection with human activities that motivated ancient philosophers to theoretically engage with pain in the first place, with an emphasis on its ethical or practical relevance. Not surprisingly, Aristotle, who composed the first systematic treatise on ethics, repeatedly stressed that pain, like its counterpart pleasure, is of crucial significance for understanding and achieving virtues and well-being.2 Despite such an emphasis, in Aristotle’s works, however, pain always stood alongside—and in the shadow of—pleasure. Although two detailed accounts—Nicomachean

1 I would like to thank the audience at the Exeter Pain Conference and at the Tsinghua Philosophical Colloquium, specially to the organizers Daniel King and Asher Jiang. This paper has also greatly benefited from the comments and suggestions of Han Baltussen. I can be contacted at [email protected]. 2 Eth. Nic. 1104b8–13, 1105a6–12, b23, 1106b19–21, 1172a20–27.

© Wei Cheng, 2023 | doi:10.1163/9789004677463_009

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Ethics vii 11–14 and x 1–5—are dedicated to pleasure, no matching account of pain can be found.3 In view of this asymmetry, we may well ask how Aristotle would theorise pain or what constitutes an Aristotelian theory of pain. Our curiosity, however, seems well satisfied by Alexander, the most celebrated commentator of Aristotle’s works in antiquity. In his Problemata Ethica (PE), a miscellaneous collection of essays on Aristotle’s ethics in the form of ‘question and answer’,4 Alexander notably spends a lot of time and effort on elaborating on pain and its evaluation, struggling with various problems concerning pain by appealing to Aristotle in different manners.5 We may ask what exactly the motivation is behind his dealing with pain as a philosophically relevant concept. It is even more puzzling that what he offers in the PE is far from a unified account of pain but looks more like multiple working hypotheses to be weighed up in a didactic or dialectical context. Although all of his accounts appear prima facie firmly in the Aristotelian mould, under closer scrutiny considerable parts of them seem either incoherent with some of Aristotle’s teachings or even incompatible with each other.6 This incoherence exacerbates the problem of making sense of Alexander’s concern and engagement. One cannot help but wonder what drives him to take the topic of pain so seriously and to treat it in such an idiosyncratic manner. Among all the options he puts forwards, is there a definite answer to the questions he raises or at least one he deems more promising? Or, does he deliberatively experiment with a variety of views in an intra-school didactic setting, in order to diagnose problems and stimulate discussions? In particular, how should we assess the apparent inconsistencies in his attempts? Do they reflect his incompetence in controlling material or a typical failure of the eclecticism

3 In Eth. Nic. 1170a22–25, Aristotle seems to promise a more detailed account of pain. Nevertheless, no passage in the Eth. Nic. can be indisputably taken to fulfil this promise. It is likely that he addresses pain in more detail in his lost treatises such as On Being or Having Been Affected (Περὶ τοῦ πάσχειν ἢ πεπονθέναι, Diog. Laert. 5.22), Affections (Πάθη, Diog. Laert. 5.24), or On Health and Diseases (Περὶ ὑγιείας καὶ νόσου, Diog. Laert. 5.25). 4 For general features of this manual, see Madigan (1987); Sharples (1990). We have no reason to doubt the attribution of this text to Alexander, see Sharples (1990), 2–4. 5 A few recent studies have touched on this topic, but all of them are more concerned with pleasure, see Natali (2015); Cheng (2018). 6 The inconsistencies are mainly found in his accounts of the relationship between ponos and lupē as well as in the questions of whether and how pain is a contrary of pleasure. I shall explain why instances of the term lupē in the PE cannot all be translated as distress. Although some of Alexander’s discussions are undeniably influenced by the Stoicism, not all of his usages of lupē follow the Stoic theory (see Sections 5 and 6). Moreover, this translation blurs or overshadows Alexander’s concern with, and indebtedness to, Aristotle’s legacy, even if, I think, he often goes beyond what Aristotle actually says.

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that blends non-Peripatetic elements in his ‘orthodox’ Aristotelianism, or does it rather reveal complexities or difficulties in theorizing pain and its relation to pleasure, especially within the Aristotelian framework to which he is deeply committed? With these questions in mind, I aim to unravel several strands in Alexander’s writings by elucidating and evaluating his struggle with pain as a philosophically interesting concept. I argue that, in his endeavour to systematise Aristotle, Alexander comes to realise that some core doctrines of his master about algedonic properties seem incoherent in subtle ways. He tries to alleviate the tension between them by reconsidering the purported badness of pain and the way pain and pleasure function as opposites. This, however, paradoxically prompts him to go beyond Aristotle’s ‘orthodox’ views, and, more importantly, leads him to a discovery of a series of philosophical problems pertaining to the complex nature of pain and neighbouring experiences. By reconstructing the strategies Alexander deploys across various difficulties in this work, I shall show that his concerns are more coherent than the genre of PE and its form initially tempt us to think, and that the merits of his engagement lie more in its philosophical than its exegetical aspect. In particular, his discussion helps us to realise that because of the complexity of pain, the opposition between pleasure and pain is not as symmetrical as it appears prima facie. So, the achievement of Alexander’s analysis does not consist in how loyal he is to Aristotle’s legacy, but to what extent he diagnoses and assesses the problems of pain in terms of his revisionist Aristotelianism in fresh ways.7

2

Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle

To understand why pain becomes a pressing problem for Alexander, we should first take a quick look at his starting point, Aristotle’s understanding of algedonic properties. In the Philebus, Plato has Socrates point out: “we will not be able to provide a satisfactory examination of pleasure if we do not study it together with pain” (31b5–6, transl. Frede).8 In accordance with this notion, Aristotle indeed often discusses the nature of pleasure alongside pain, illuminating one via the other.9

7 A similar point is made by Sharples (1987), 1180. 8 This may reflect a common place among the Academics given the way in which the hedonistic debate among Eudoxus, Speusippus, and Eudoxus proceeded. 9 Cat. 11b4; Top. 114b7–8, 119a38–b1; Ph. 230b8–10; Eth. Nic. 1104b30–32, 1154a10–11, 1154b13–14; Eth. Eud. 1222a15–16; Rh. 1372a3, 1381a4–5, 1388a26–27.

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Using the opposition between them, he seems to believe that the properties of one can be well mirrored by those of the other in terms of a contrasting method. But, unfortunately, the accounts of pleasure in Eth. Nic. vii and x— the two most systematic accounts of pleasure in the corpus Aristotelicum— already seem to differ from each other in so many respects that it is uncertain from where we may start establishing a reliable account of pain.10 In Eth. Nic. vii Aristotle famously criticises the anti-hedonists for their failure to discriminate two kinds of pleasure: pleasure per accidens and pleasure simpliciter (ἁπλῶς).11 He argues that, whereas the former depends on kinēsis or genesis, a restorative process in a living body, which presupposes a deficient condition and is often being accompanied by a related pain (Eth. Nic. 1153a1–7, 1154a28–30, 1154b17–19), the latter should be defined as an unimpeded energeia of the natural state—perhaps a smooth performance of our well-developed cognitive faculty—which is purely enjoyable (1153a13–15). In Eth. Nic. x, he retains the polemic against those who endorse the kinēsis/genesis-based understanding of pleasure (1173a29–b31) but leaves the distinction between X simpliciter and X per accidens unmentioned. Instead, he is at pains to show that pleasure is something like energeia because it supervenes on (ἐπιγινόμενον, 1174b33) an energeia and helps the energeia it supervenes on perform more perfectly (1174b24–33).12 The difference of the two accounts has generated longstanding debates over the questions on whether Aristotle takes pleasure to be essentially an energeia and whether the two accounts are incompatible in nature. Such problems, however, rarely bother Alexander, who, as a unitarian, not only treats Eth. Nic. vii and x as essentially telling one and same story, but also uses the difference between the two as an opportunity to develop more alternatives when solving the problems which Aristotle’s text directly or indirectly raises. This synthetical approach indeed helps Alexander draw a coher-

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The following outline of the difference between the two accounts of pleasure is unavoidably simplistic. For more elaborate account, see Cheng (2018), 174–177 with references. Aristotle does not refer to this distinction in a unified way, see Eth. Nic. 1152b8–9, 1152b27, b29, 1153b2, 1152b8–9, 1153a29–30, 1154b16–18. Following the custom of Aristotelian scholarship, I use the term ‘supervenience’ or its cognates to specify the way an activity is being accompanied by its proper pleasure. Alexander adopts ἐπιγίγνομαι and sometimes employs the preposition epi for the same relationship. We should not confuse this relationship, either in Aristotle or in Alexander, with the concept of supervenience frequently found in contemporary philosophy of mind since Davidson, whose key notion holds that there cannot be an A-difference without a Bdifference if A supervenes on B (see e.g., Kim [1993]). For a more elaborate treatment of this notion in the PE, see Cheng (2018), 180–185.

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ent picture of Aristotle’s doctrine of pleasure, and meanwhile makes a strong case against the hedonists, especially those who interpret Aristotle in a prohedonistic direction.13 It is, however, also due to this generous attitude to Eth. Nic. vii and x that Alexander becomes puzzled by the nature of pain, which seems to fluctuate in the light of different focalisation on Aristotle’s accounts. To illustrate this, let me first summarise Aristotle’s central theses which Alexander frequently invokes: [1] The relation of opposition: Pain is an opposite of pleasure.14 [2] The principle of symmetry: The nature of pain, due to [1], can be extrapolated from pleasure in term of a contrasting method, and vice versa.15 [3] The affinity supervenience: Pleasure supervenes on energeia in terms of affinity (οἰκειότης), which explains why pleasure shares the features of the energeia it supervenes on.16 [4] The bipartition of pleasure: Pleasure can be divided into two kinds: pleasure simpliciter, which is an unimpeded energeia of the natural state, and pleasure per accidens, which is produced by a restorative process (kinēsis/genesis).17 In addition to these ‘tenets’, what is also important for understanding Alexander’s struggle with the concept of pain is the dialectical setting Aristotle constructs to unfold his own theory in Eth. Nic. x. Historically it can be traced back to what is often labelled as the Academic debate over hedonism, a controversy fuelled by the value judgment of pleasure in Plato’s Academy.18 In Aristotle’s account, the divergence between the hedonist Eudoxus and the disputant Speusippus is under the spotlight (Eth. Nic. x 2–3). In their back and forth, Aristotle seems to be always on Eudoxus’ side, helping him to counter the attack from Speusippus and his followers.19 Although neither the name of Eudoxus nor that of Speusippus is found in the PE, Alexander displays an undeniable interest in this debate, especially that over the argument from contraries (AfC).

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Cheng (2019). For the intra-school dissents in the Peripatetic tradition, see an overview in Baltussen (2016), 106–126. PE 124.22, 125.3, 125.30, 125.32–33, 125.37, 126.13, 126.19, 127.3–6, 127.22–23, 136.30; Alex. in Top. 92.3, 186.20, 187.4, 199.13–15, 280.20–22, 361.6–7. Alexander does not make this principle explicit, but implicitly uses it in different places, see PE 124.29–32, 125.1–3, 126.1–5, 127.3–8, 127.14–20, 127.31–128.2, 136.30–137.1, 137.5–10. PE 120.11–16, 124.18–20, 124.29, 127.11–14, 133.20–25, 137.3–5, 137.27–28, 137.34–35. PE 125.20–32, 126.13, 127.30, 137.12–16. For different accounts of the Academic debate, see, e.g., Philippson (1925); Gosling & Taylor (1982), Chs. 12, 14; Warren (2009); Aufderheide (2020), 61–75; Cheng (2020). An exception is Eth. Nic. 1172b23–34, pace Weiss (1979).

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Obviously, Eudoxus’ AfC—the goodness of pleasure can be inferred from the badness of pain—is based on the relation of opposition and the principle of symmetry, the two theses that Aristotle also endorses (Eth. Nic. 1172b18–20, cf. a similar version in Eth. Nic. 1153b1–4). Moreover, Eudoxus’ starting point [5] pain is to be avoided and bad20 seems intuitively true and can also be attested in Aristotle.21 There is much that Aristotle seems to find congenial in Eudoxus, which accounts for his asymmetrical attitude to the astronomer and Speusippus. On the other side, Speusippus’ dialectical refutation against Eudoxus in their debate is extremely interesting. The Platonist does not level his objection at the badness of pain (Eudoxus’ starting point) nor does he directly attack the hedonistic conclusion by invoking the possible existence of bad pleasures. Rather, he is prepared to recognise the opposition between pleasure and pain but undermines Eudoxus’ AfC by recalling that there is also a bad-bad opposition in addition to the good-bad opposition. This implies that the Eudoxan AfC can be developed in an opposite direction, so that the argument in favour of pleasure is not conclusive (Eth. Nic. 1173a5–8, cf. 1153b5–6).

3

Dialectical Problems of Pain

It would be too far afield to trace out various ‘dialectical paths’ the three philosophers take in this intra-school controversy.22 For our purposes, it is of more interest to see the idiosyncratic way Alexander deals with the debate and its consequence. No doubt, as in other works, he spares no effort in defending Aristotle, or more precisely, defends what he takes to be Aristotle’s view. Nevertheless, he does not seem to do so when AfC is under discussion. As noted, Alexander is not so much concerned with who exactly held or disputed AfC, or how they grappled with each other on the basis of their own theories and motivations. Rather, he erases the historical context and the dialectical setting of Aristotle’s original presentation but engages with AfC in an anonymous and quite systematic manner.23 Without allying himself explicitly with Aristotle or

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PE 125.2–6, 125.29, 126.3, 126.19–20, 127.3–8, 127.33, 136.30, 137.6, 139.21–22. Top. 119a38–b1; de An. 431b9; [Arist.] De Mundo 701b36; Eth. Nic. 1104b30–32, 1113b2, 1119a22–23, 1153b1–2, 1154a4–5, 1154a19; Eth. Eud. 1225a16, 1227a40–b1. See Warren (2009); Cheng (2020). Natali (2015) already notices this feature of the PE, yet he does not address the very aspect we are concerned with.

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Eudoxus, Alexander showcases various possibilities of constructing different AfC in terms of the various ways pleasure can be an opposite of pain. Anyone familiar with Aristotle’s Eth. Nic. x must ask herself why Alexander presents the debate over AfC in such a ‘non-Aristotelian’ way. Is Aristotle’s original, ethical concern drowned out by a logical or dialectical interest, so that the relationship of opposition itself takes pride of place rather than the nature of pleasure and pain?24 Or, does Alexander, like Aspasius (in Eth. Nic. 142.9), fail to adequately capture the subtle constellation of the Academic dispute due to his inclination to systematise and thereby simplify Aristotle’s original insight? To answer these questions, we start from the affinity supervenience (point [3] above), which, for Alexander, is the cornerstone of Aristotle’s doctrine of pleasure. For since every pleasure supervenes on some activity (ἐπὶ ἐνεργείᾳ τινὶ γίνεται), and there is an affinity (οἰκειότης) between pleasures and the activities on which they supervene—for they are in a way their ends (τέλη γάρ πώς)–it is clear that in this way [the pleasures] themselves would also be differentiated in [a way] corresponding to the activities. (PE 120.11– 14)25 The understanding of pleasure as a supervenient end is obviously taken up from the formulation “ἐπιγινόμενόν τι τέλος” at Eth. Nic. 1174b33. Although Aristotle’s original notion is controversial, this relationship is unambiguously adduced to reveal the intrinsic nature of pleasure. In other words, Aristotle wants to use the supervenience relation to support his account that pleasure cannot be divided into temporal parts but is complete/perfect (τελειοτάτη) at every moment owning to the goal-involving or goal-like feature.26 No matter how one cashes out the supervenience in detail, affinity is a significant constituent of this relationship or is just what this supervenience aims to vindicate. It is remarkable, however, that Alexander shows little interest in the intrinsic, goallike nature of pleasure itself, nor in the way in which pleasure is said to complete the energeia on which it supervenes, namely, to make it “more exact, more enduring, and better” (Eth. Nic. 1175b14–15). For him, affinity is not even integral to what is meant by the relationship of supervenience. Instead, he makes explicit that an algedonic property can be concomitant with an energeia—not in the sense of well-functioning, goal-involving exercise of our cognitive faculties, 24 25 26

Castelli (2015) and Natali (2015) are more or less in this group. All translations of PE are based on Sharples (1990), often with modifications. For these features of pleasure in Aristotle, see Heinaman (2011).

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but in the sense of any activity—in terms of affinity or conversely in terms of alienation (ἀλλοτριότης).27 As a result, the relation between the experience of pleasure and its corresponding energeia becomes a contingent one, because, on this interpretation, such an experience can be absent or replaced by others in the activity that share the same value. In neutralizing Aristotle’s normative story about the supervenience, what is left in Alexander’s account is thus the causal dependence of pleasure on activity in terms of an externalist account, that is, the nature of every pleasure should be understood in relation to the activity from which it is derived.28 From this link Alexander further ensures that a value supervenience of pleasure is placed on energia: “The [pleasures] that [supervene] on activities that are to be chosen are [themselves] to be chosen, and those that [supervene] on those that are not like this are to be avoided” (PE 127.11–13).29 Notably, it is the supervenience relation that provides Alexander with a useful tool to develop his account of pain. Everything Aristotle would say about pain seems to be well reflected by what he says about pleasure. Their value judgement is not an exception: (1) Energeia in the sense of activity can be good or bad (common sense). (2) Pleasure supervenes on energeia in virtue of affinity (the affinity supervenience). Therefore: (3) Pleasure can be good or bad (from 1 and 2). (4) Pain is an opposite of pleasure (the relation of opposition). (5) Pain supervenes on energeia in virtue of alienation (from 2, 4 and the principle of symmetry). Therefore: (6) Pain can be bad or good (from 1 and 5). The reasoning appears prima facie faithful to Aristotle.30 The supervenience well explains his emphasis on the variety of pleasures,31 which can be used

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PE 124.30, 124.35. For this aspect, see Cheng (2019). To avoid complication, I shall not consider the passages where an algedonic property that is indifferent is said to supervene on an activity that is also indifferent both in terms of the affinity supervenience and the alienation supervenience. Alexander’s introduction of the concept of the indifferent is obviously indebted to the Stoicism, but unlike the Stoics, he does not ascribe both all pleasure and pain to the class of the indifferent. According to the principle of symmetry, Alexander also takes the process as convertible, so that one can draw (1) as a conclusion from (7) based on the same pattern. Alexander: PE 120.11–121.11, 139.15–28; cf. Aristotle: Eth. Nic. 1173b28, 1174a10, esp. 1175a20– 76a29; for recent discussions of this aspect, see Price (2017).

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to build a classical argument—the so-called heterogeneity objection—against hedonists by demonstrating that the pleasures they appreciate have no unified nature.32 Moreover, though Aristotle himself never articulates pain as something alien to the energeia on which it supervenes, he indeed associates unpleasant feeling with an alienation to the activity somebody is engaged in.33 Even from intuition, we also tend to agree that pain, like a foreign force, can disturb or destroy the familiar setting of our sense and the integrity of our body that underpins normal everyday actions, compelling us to a feeling of not being ‘at home’. For these reasons, the alien supervenience is not unattractive for understanding the nature of pain, on both interpretative and empirical grounds. On the other hand, however, if Alexander embraces the wholesale result about the status of pain, he must face at least two problems. First, given the conclusion that pain can be good or bad, Alexander assumes the burden of picking out good pains and explaining their goodness. It would not be easy either from intuition or from an Aristotelian perspective. Alexander even asks himself whether it is absurd (ἄτοπον) to say that bad activities are accompanied by pains that are in a good state (PE 124.26–27).34 Furthermore, as mentioned, the badness of pain is the starting point of Eudoxus’ AfC, defended by Aristotle, who famously declares that “pain disturbs and destroys the nature of the sufferer” (Eth. Nic. 1119a23–24) and even “pain is destructive of living” (ἀναιρετικὴ τοῦ ζῆν, Eth. Eud. 1229a40–b1). In other words, if Alexander endorses premise (6), he can hardly explain Aristotle’s argumentative strategy in Eth. Nic. x 2, nor does (6) cohere well with the Stagirites’ overall attitude to pain, which is apparently negative. As a result, Alexander is obliged to re-examine the supervenience relation between pain and activity, exploring whether it can serve as a cornerstone for understanding the nature of pain and its evaluation. It may be to evade these difficulties that Alexander provides an alternative story about AfC. 32 33

34

Vogt (2018, 108–110) discusses this strategy in the context of Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure. Aristotle treats alien pleasures as painful (Eth. Nic. 1175b15: αἱ δ’ ἀλλότριαι λυμαίνοντα; 1175b16–17 αἱ ἀλλότριαι ἡδοναὶ ποιοῦσιν ὅπερ αἱ οἰκεῖαι λῦπαι). By contrast, pleasure is experience that is proper (οἰκεῖα) to a well-functioning activity, the opposite side of alienation (Eth. Nic. 1153a20–22, 1175a34–36, b22–23, 1175b16–17, b30–31, 1178a5). Notably there is no example for good pain that supervenes on a bad activity in the PE. Sharples (1990), 32 helps Alexander provide an example: “pain felt at [e.g.] betraying a friend, which is desirable.” It is interesting, however, to see that in Eth. Nic. 1166b20–25, Aristotle uses the involvement of pain/distress (e.g. “being full of regrets”) in the activities of vicious people to show the badness of these activities and their character. Theophrastus likewise emphasises severe pains intrinsic to wicked men (fr. 443, 444 FHSG). They do not seem to function as good pains supervening on bad activities.

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[a] It was necessary (ἔδει) either for every pleasure too to be bad, being opposed to pain as one bad to another, [b] or, if pleasure was opposed to what is bad not as a thing to be avoided or a bad, but as a good, for all [pleasure] to be a good. [c] For if some pleasure were a bad, [then], [since] all cases of pain are bad, and pleasure is opposed to pain, some [pleasure] would be opposed [to pain] as one bad to another, and some as a good to a bad, which needs explanation. (PE 127.3–7) In this passage, Alexander lays out three different versions of constructing the ways in which pleasure is said to be an opposite of pain from an evaluative perspective. Among them, what I have labelled [a] seems to represent the antihedonistic position of Speusippus, who is said to hold that all pleasures are bad or not good.35 By contrast, thesis [b]—leaving aside slight differences— resembles the Eudoxean thesis defended by Aristotle.36 Interestingly enough, thesis [c] seems to be used here as counterfactual evidence in favour of [b]. Nevertheless, its conclusion that some pleasures are good while others are not has obviously more intuitive appeal than the contention in [b] that pleasures are all good. More strikingly, the reasoning of [c] would be precisely Speusippus’ strategy against Eudoxus if his criticism is read in a dialectical way. As the past tense in ἔδει suggests, Alexander may refer to a real intra-school discussion in which different opinions were put on the table.37 We should note, however, that based on consideration of the PE as a whole, [c] seems to be Alexander’s favourite option despite its Speusippean outlook,38 as the agenda of Problem §15 implies: “how, if all pain is a bad, is it not also the case that all pleasure is a good” (PE 136.28–29): Pain seems by its own nature (φύσει) to be bad for those that have it. But if pain is bad, and the opposite of what is bad is [either] good or bad, it will be necessary for pleasure, which is opposite to pain, to be good or bad. (PE 125.1–3). 35

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This does not mean that Speusippus does use [a] to support his belief that pleasure is bad, nor that this is the counterargument he appeals to in criticizing Eudoxus’ AfC. I construe his criticism as dialectical in the sense that it is sufficient for Speusippus to remind us of the existence of a bad-bad opposition, although his positive doctrine must be behind this criticism. For my elaboration on the two versions of AfC, see Cheng (2020). Sharples (1990), 31. The same idea is repeatedly found in this collection, see PE 126.3–5, 126.19–22, 127.19–26, 127.31–128.2, 136.30–137.1.

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We are now encountering another way of explicating the varieties of pleasure, which does not use the affinity supervenience. Although the introduction of the bad-bad opposition into AfC on the value of pleasure renders Alexander much closer to Speusippus than to the alliance of Eudoxus and Aristotle, this enables him to distance Aristotle more unambiguously from falling victim to the Eudoxean hedonism with which he is in sympathy. In doing so, Alexander (as I have argued in Cheng [2018]) makes a strong case against those who read Aristotle in a more pleasure-friendly light by means of an alternative reading of Aristotle’s supervenience, according to which the excellence of the activity is indispensably constituted by the pleasure it generates. This implicit aim naturally motivates Alexander to expunge the Academic background in Aristotle’s account of AfC, because otherwise he could hardly explain why Aristotle, following Eudoxus, uses AfC to establish the goodness of pleasure (though, not pleasure as the ultimate good). So far, we have two quite different stories about the opposition between pleasure and pain as well as their evaluation. Both have their merits and costs. Both seem to be Aristotelian in one respect, but not so in another. The dilemma, I think, prompts Alexander to revise parts of the Aristotelian ‘dogma’, refining the way pain functions as an opposite of pleasure.

4

X simpliciter vs. X per accidens

We have been speaking of ‘pleasure/pain is bad or good’ and ‘pleasure is an opposite of pain’ as if they were univocal propositions. On reflection, however, it is clear that the claim ‘pleasure is good’ is not equivalent to saying that pleasures are all good or that pleasure, in general, is good, and so forth. It means that ‘the relation of opposition’ and ‘the badness of pain’, two purported theses of Aristotle’s ethics require further refinement if the debate over AfC or the value of algedonic properties is to develop further. Theoretically, there are a number of avenues available to fulfil this requirement. Following Eth. Nic. vii, one option Alexander considers is to refine the opposition between pleasure and pain in terms of Aristotle’s distinction between X that is said of simpliciter and X that is said of per accidens, corresponding to his distinction between pleasure as energeia and pleasure as kinēsis. Nevertheless, while adopting the former distinction, Alexander does not take up its metaphysical implication. His main concern is rather to specify the sense of the opposition between pleasure and pain and thereby to provide a non-hedonistic evaluation of pleasure as good and pain as bad in a specific, important sense.

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In this way pain, which is bad, will have as its opposite pleasure in the proper and unqualified sense (κυρίως τε καὶ ἁπλῶς), which is all a good, even if not in the same way; and the [pleasures] which are contrary to nature [will be] neither pleasures without qualification nor good. (PE 125.29–31)39 Starting from the badness of pain (lupē) Alexander argues that there are various ways in which pleasure is an opposite of pain. The upshot leads us to return to the classical situation in the debate over AfC among Aristotle, Eudoxus and Spesuippus, in which two kinds of opposition are on the table: [OPg] Pleasure as a good is an opposite of pain as a bad. [OPb] Pleasure as a bad is an opposite of pain as a bad. Whereas Aristotle and Eudoxus countenance [OPg], their critics (for example, Speusippus) either endorse [OPb] or—for the sake of argument—take both options as equally permissible. Alexander’s position, as I have shown, seems closer to Speusippus than to Aristotle himself, because in many other places he gives the impression that both [OPg] and [OPb] are true and mutually supplementary.40 It is, however, important to realise that the agreement of Alexander with Speusippus stops here. For the recognition of [OPg] and [OPb] does not prevent Alexander from establishing a hierarchy between them: [OPg] enjoys a priority over [OPb] insofar as in [OPg] pleasure is predicated in its proper and strict sense,41 whereas [OPb] merely concerns pleasure in a qualified and even in homonymous sense.42 The result seems to alleviate our initial worry, turning Speusippus’ criticism to Aristotle’s advantage. Granting that the strategy works, one might still wonder what kinds of pleasures and pains Alexander has in mind when he is talking about the asymmetrical ways in which a pleasure functions as an opposite of a pain. How could Alexander cash out this picture if not resorting to the metaphysical concepts of

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Madigan (1987), 1276 follows Bruns, who assumes a lacuna after 125.31, and adds “and so are not opposed to pain as good to evil”. The emendation is not necessary, and it even obscures Alexander’s intention of highlighting the central way in which pleasure functions as an opposite of pain. PE 125.1–3, 126.3–5, 126.19–22, 127.19–26, 127.31–128.2, 136.30–137.1. κυρίως, PE 125.19; κυρίως τε καὶ ἁπλῶς, 125.20; ἀληθῶς τε καὶ κυρίως, 125.21–22. διὸ καὶ ὁμωνύμους ἐκείνας, PE 125.18, also cf. οὐχ ἁπλῶς ἡδέα, 125.27; οὔτε ἡδοναὶ ἁπλῶς, 125.31; αἳ οὔτε κυρίως … ἡδοναί, 127.30. It is interesting to note that Aristotle never uses “homonym-

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kinēsis and energeia? He tells us that whether some pleasures are good without qualification or not is determined by whether an ideal agent, in practice, feels them as good or not (PE 137.13–17). Interestingly, he goes on to divide pains into two kinds in an opposed, yet symmetrical way. Whereas pain that can also be suffered by a good man is said to be bad with qualification, pain that cannot be experienced by a good man is bad without qualification, presumably because it is absurd to say that a good man undergoes something bad simpliciter (PE 137.15–20). For there is no appropriate, that is, good way, for instance, to feel envy, lust, Schadenfreude or the like. A good man should not be in such a state and thus not feel pain that is bad without qualification. Alexander thus read the evaluation of hedonic properties, even pain, in a strongly ethical way. But a sensitive reader who may ask whether a pain is bad with or without qualification really relies on the question whether the subject is ethically good or bad.43 We say that illness is bad, usually without any ethical implication or in an ethically neutral way. It is thus also of initial appeal to take pain of this kind as bad without qualification in the sense that it is bad due to its very nature, under any circumstances and for anyone—regardless of her or his moral quality. If so, we are confronted with a dilemma: some pains (for example, envy) are bad simpliciter, because they cannot be experienced in a good way, whereas other pains appear also to be bad simpliciter, because they harm people regardless of what kind of people they are. To defend his option, Alexander could reply, in a Stoic fashion, that a good man, despite suffering disease, would not be distressed about them. Conceived along this line, a good man—if he is in illness/unwell—of course experiences what it is like to be in such illness/unwell, an unpleasant feeling that usually goes hand in hand with suffering, but he, owing to some heroic virtue he possesses, can decide to be indifferent to, or have no strong emotional response to, the pain he is in. Accordingly, a wicked man would have double the pains: physical pain dir-

43

ous” in his account of pleasure. As a matter of fact, he acknowledges some pleasures that are not spoken of without qualification still as genuinely pleasant, whereas Alexander, for his strong anti-hedonistic anxiety, tends to exclude them from the class of pleasure. Aspasius already appeals to the concept of homonymity in his interpretation of Eth. Nic. vii (ὁμωνύμως, in Eth. Nic. 143.15–16), and he makes explicit that some (alleged) pleasures are not even pleasures (144.27). There are similar problems in Alexander’s understanding of pleasure. If pleasure is an unimpeded activity of the natural state (Eth. Nic. 1153a14), nothing seems to prevent an ethically bad man accomplishing the activity of this kind as long as his non-ethical competences (intellectual or biological) are ready for their proper function.

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ectly from the illness and emotional distress at all the suffering caused by the illness. If Alexander opts for this direction in response, then behind the superficial question of whether pain is experienced exclusively by a wicked man or also by a decent one, there is a deeper question on the nature of pain itself. As a result, Alexander is expected to say something more about pain itself.

5

Lupē and Ponos

A rich plurality of pains is mentioned across Aristotle’s huge corpus. While preferring lupē as a generic term, he does also not hesitate to employ other words interchangeably for such experiences.44 By contrast, one of the characteristics of Alexander’s account of pain is his repeated endeavours to theoretically distinguish between ponos and lupē,45 which seems unprecedented,46 and later echoed by Aquinas’ more famous and sophisticated distinction between dolor and tristitia.47 But what is the relevance of this distinction in the very context of PE? Few scholars realise the value of Alexander’s attempt as much as Wolfsdorf, who points out: Alexander articulates a position that, so far as I know, is first advanced here: it is distress (lypê) and not pain (ponos) that is the opposite of pleasure (hêdonê). Although I have not made much of the point, it has been an implicit assumption of almost all hedonic theorizing from Plato to the Old

44 45

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For Aristotle’s use of pain vocabulary, see Cheng (2019). The vagueness of the use of lupē in Aristotle inevitably renders the category more susceptible to ambiguity and controversy. But if we consider the full range of Aristotle’s works, it is indisputable that lupē is his most favoured and almost standard term for any feeling or experience that comes to us as unpleasant. As the term for the concept itself, it covers a broad spectrum ranging from sophisticated emotion to primitive sensory response, see Cheng (2019). Hence, I cannot follow Konstan (2018, 201–202), who argues that lupē in Aristotle is even more specific than emotional distress, which, following cognitivists, he thinks always involves logos, and that it would be better to translate lupē as grief. Of course, different attitudes to ponos and lupē can be attested before Alexander, especially among the Cynics and Stoics. The cynical philosopher Onesicritus of Astypalaea (380/375–305/300 bc), for instance, characterises ponos as friendly in contrast to lupē as hostile (FGrHist 134F17), a contrast seemingly used to defend a certain form of asceticism. Alexander is undeniably influenced by these Hellenistic ideas, but, as I shall show below, his approach and position are considerably different from them. See also Baltussen and Courtil in this volume. Miner (2009), 188–211.

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Stoics that pleasure and pain are opposites. Thus, Alexander’s criticism of this point is or at least appears to be highly original.48 This remark places Alexander in contrast to the philosophical tradition from Plato to the Stoics, who are said to all take for granted the opposition between pleasure and pain. Alexander, on this view, is the first person to reject this default assumption by distinguishing lupē as “distress” from ponos as “pain”. The assessment, I think, has a grain of truth in it, yet needs some revision. It only holds if what all of Alexander’s predecessors had in mind when speaking of the opposite of pleasure is ponos rather than lupē. Unfortunately, even Alexander’s attempts to demarcate ponos and lupē are in no way unequivocally consistent, but often vague and sometimes contradict each other flatly (see below). In fact, as I shall show, his separation of lupē from ponos is not motivated to abolish the opposition of pleasure and pain as such, but conversely to save this opposition by clarifying the precise sense of the claim that pleasure is a contrary of pain. Only on this interpretation, I think we can maintain, rather than disrupt, Alexander’s continuing concern with Aristotle. Let us first consider one of his attempts: For ponos indicates some oppression (τινα θλῖψιν) of the body, but lupē a contraction (συστολήν) of the soul If all pleasure consisted in bodily relaxation (διαχύσει), ponos would be opposite to it; but since pleasure is a certain relaxation of the soul which does not occur through the body or supervenes on the body (ἐπὶ σώματι γινομένη) alone, it will not be ponos that is the opposite to this sort of pleasure, but lupē. As with pleasure, there is both lupē supervening on the oppressions of the body and lupē of the soul itself occasioned by itself. (PE 126.7–13, modified) The opening of this passage may tempt us to take the distinction between lupē and ponos as one between psychical and bodily pain, in scholastic terms, between a passio animae and a passio corporalis. This reading, however, imposes a very artificial semantic constraint on the word hēdonē, which is here only opposed to lupē, yet in its ordinary use usually covers (if not simply amounts to) bodily pleasure. More importantly, the immediately ensuing text prevents us from hastily embracing this option. For Alexander goes on to claim that pleasure, the opposite of lupē, “does not occur through the body or supervene on the body alone” (loc. cit.). This indicates that lupē and ponos are not

48

Wolfsdorf (2012), 274 n.8.

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realised on the same level, so that if pain is divided into two kinds: physical and psychical, both are essentially lupē, which in a way interferes with the naïve body-mind dualism. Alexander’s statement49—“as with pleasure, there is both lupē supervening on the oppressions of the body and lupē of the soul itself occasioned by itself” (126.11–12)—makes it clear that, although the soul is responsible for the generation of lupē, it also includes the case where someone is pained by the oppression of the body. This picture, so construed, is reminiscent of Socrates’ insight in Plato’s Philebus that for a living being the body cannot be in pain unless the soul—no matter whatever faculty it uses—feels pain, which is essentially an accessed psychological state rather than a perceptual object to be accessed. If this is the full meaning of Alexander’s words, his understanding of lupē as pain seems trivially true in the post-Platonic intellectual atmosphere. Moreover, on this reading, Alexander’s introduction of ponos is left redundant and thus his motivation unexplained given that we think he wants to clarify the ways pain is related to pleasure. For if lupē is an inclusive term for pain, either physical or psychical, whereas ponos, as a bodily state, does not even belong to the category of passio animae, how would one feel the urgent need to demarcate one from the other? Nothing contributes to the clarification of the very opposition which worries Alexander. More importantly, this picture is at odds with his characterisation of ponos as some sort of lupē (λύπην τινά) a few lines earlier (125.34), no matter whether one understands it as ponos belonging to the set of lupē or as ponos resembling lupē, yet not in a fully-fledged sense (see below). In fact, the term thlipsis (also cf. PE 125.33, 125, 35, 126.11)—which literally means pressure and crushing (LSJ s.v.)—suggests that the ponos in question cannot be simply physical harm or damage, but points to what it feels like to be in such a state, that is a feeling of being pressured and weighed down, perhaps an uncomfortable, dull sensation. Such a feeling can be caused by our initial and unpremeditated response to physical burden, stimulate, and harm, a borderline case of pain that is not necessarily being accompanied by a distinctive aversion.50 If so, lupē and hēdonē should be more than what the concept of 49

50

This separates Alexander’s use from the tendency since Hellenistic times when lupē is closely associated with psychological pain (sadness, distress, grief), especially grief. For a loss and even a mood like depression or anxiety about some contingency, see Mattern (2016), 206–208. Thlipsis has been associated with ponos in the Aristotelian tradition, especially in accounts of fatigue, cf. Arist. [Pr.] 881b30–31: ἐφ’ ἕνα γὰρ τόπον συναθροιζόμενον τὸ βάρος ἐν τῇ καθέδρᾳ ἢ κατακλίσει τῇ θλίψει ποιεῖ πόνον; Thphr. Lass. 4, Sollenberger: καὶ ἡ πίεσις ἐπίπονον, οἷον γὰρ θλίψις καὶ πληγή τις; Lass. 9: ἡ γὰρ θλίψις σφοδρότερον ποιεῖ καὶ μείζω τὸν πόνον. Alexander seems to utilise its physical or medical connotation to illustrate what it looks

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passio animae usually suggests. How, then, to conceive of these two states? One may feel that not much is gained in the absence of a detailed treatment. Indeed, considered in isolation, the identification of lupē with contraction (συστολή) of the soul and hēdonē with its relaxation (διάχυσις) is not very informative and even appears paradoxical, because Alexander seems to be using physical language to illustrate lupē and hēdonē as experiences which essentially go back to the activity of the soul. To capture Alexander’s insight, we should realise that the terms— contraction and relaxation—are more than a visualisation of the psychological states he is trying to illustrate: they allude to an influential Stoic theory that underpins the very distinction.51 Unlike lupē in Aristotle, which can indiscriminately refer to almost all kinds of unpleasant states, for the Stoics, lupē primarily functions as one of the most basic passions, an overarching category of a feeling-bad state52 in which a fresh judgement is necessarily involved.53 The Stoics had various ways to formulate this fundamental thought, not always in an elaborate fashion. One of its most complete forms is preserved by Stobaeus (2.7.10b = SVF iii.394), according to which “lupē is a contraction of the soul, disobedient to reason (λόγῳ), caused by the fresh belief (τὸ δοξάζειν) that something bad is present, at which it is proper to be contracted (συστέλλεσθαι)”.54 This indicates that the contraction of the soul, strictly speaking, cannot be directly identified with the state of lupē, but refers to the effect of the relevant belief and a component of its content. In feeling lupē, one does not only perceive something as being bad, but assents to its content so as to perceive that it is that way. Lupē is said to be irrational, not because it always

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like to be in ponos, just as he uses the metaphor “contraction” (συστολή) to describe the state of being in lupē. Although the latter image comes from the Stoicism, the former, as Sharples (1990), 29 already points out, is probably Alexander’s own innovation. Because Alexander wants to find something that corresponds to contraction as well as contrasts with relaxation (διάχυσις), it would be better to translate it as “oppression”, retaining its physical overtone, than the more abstract term “affliction” suggested by Sharples. Sharples (1990), 29, offers the following references: SVF 3.386, 391, 394, cf. 3.391 and Posidonius fr. 34 (Edelstein-Kidd). Also see SVF i.209, 3.16; Clem. Al. Paed. 1.13.101.1. For Chrysippus, many negative emotions are subspecies of lupē, see SVF 3.394; Diog. Laert. 7.111. Cf. Courtil in the present volume. I am using a loose expression “judgement-involving”, in order to leave open the question of whether a Stoic passion such as lupē is principally a judgement or somehow rests on the judgement as a necessary condition. Galen detects a diaphora between Zeno and Chrysippus and even inconsistencies within Chrysippus’ doctrines on the relationship between judgement and passion, see fr. 34A (Edelstein-Kidd). SVF iii.394, my translation. For a few variants of this testimony, see pseudo-Andronicus, On Passions 1.1 = SVF iii.391; Plut. Lib. aeg. 7; Gal. PHP 4.2.1.

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affects the irrational or non-rational part of the soul,55 but in the Stoic sense that the soul assents to a badness involving impressions which engender a judgment that gives rise to corresponding emotions. For this reason, one can claim, lupē is an experience that involves more robust commitment of the person who is in such a state. Put more precisely, lupē in the sense of physical pain reflects a combination or interweave of the affectively negative attitude towards ponos with the ponos itself, so that even such a bodily feeling cannot be exhausted by its sensory phenomenology alone. Likewise, lupē that is occasioned by the soul itself would be realised at two levels with a complex content as well. The Stoic doctrine of lupē became so famous that it was often quoted, paraphrased, adopted in shorthand forms, as many sources show.56 Its popularity provides a reason why Alexander, who is obviously familiar with its more elaborate version,57 regards the elliptical way of speaking—“the contraction of the soul”—as sufficient for the informed readers, first of all his students, to make sense of the distinction between lupē and ponos that he is addressing. The incorporation of Stoicism, however, should not be taken to be a widespread and unreflective eclecticism at that time. Rather, as we have shown, it represents Alexander’s open-minded use of new sources to solve interpretative and theoretical difficulties—problems underlying Peripatetic ethics. It is Aristotle’s distinction between X simpliciter and X per accidens that inspires 55 56

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I will not get into the vexed question of whether Posidonius, as Galen claims, deviates from the more orthodox stoicism in this point. For skeptical remarks, see Gill (2010). Diog. Laert. 7.111: τὴν μὲν λύπην εἶναι συστολὴν ἄλογον; 7.118: τὴν λύπην ἄλογον εἶναι συστολὴν τῆς ψυχῆς; Suda (lambda, 843): ⟨Λύπη·⟩ […] συστολὴ ἄλογος ψυχῆς; cf. PHP 4.3.2: ἀλόγους συστολὰς; SVF i.209; iii.378; iii.391; iii.463; Suda (pi, entry 27). It is interesting to see that, although pseudo-Andronicus preserves a relatively complete form of the Stoic understanding, this account differs from Stobaeus’ in that it breaks off the unity of Stobaeus’ testimony and takes “ἄλογος συστολή” and what follows after “δόξα πρόσφατος” as two equivalent definitions of lupē: “lupē is an irrational contraction, or a fresh opinion that something bad is present, at which people think it right to be contracted” (⟨Λύπη⟩ μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ἄλογος συστολή, ἢ δόξα πρόσφατος κακοῦ παρουσίας, ἐφ’ ᾧ οἴονται δεῖν συστέλλεσθαι. On Passions 1.1 = SVF iii.391, transl. LS 65B, modified). In his commentary on Aristotle’s Topics, Alexander gives a more complete form of the Stoic definition of lupē, paralleled with their understanding of fear: λυπεῖσθαι δὲ τὸ συστέλλεσθαι ἐπὶ παρόντι κακῷ, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ φοβεῖσθαι τὸ ἐπὶ προσδοκωμένῳ (In Top. 144.12–13). Due to the similar wording and structure, it seems to be an abbreviated version of Plutarch’s testimony on pain and fear in Lib. aeg. 7: κρίσις γὰρ ἡ λύπη κακοῦ τινος αὐτῷ παρόντος, ἐφ’ ᾧ συστέλλεσθαι καθήκει, καὶ ὁ φόβος κακοῦ μέλλοντος, ἀφ’ οὗ φεύγειν καθήκει καὶ ἀναχωρεῖν· ὥστε τὸν λυπούμενον αὐτὸν αὑτῷ λέγειν ὅτι “μοι κακὸν πάρεστι”, καὶ τὸν φοβούμενον ὁμοίως ὅτι “μοι κακὸν ἔσται”.

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Alexander to refine the value judgements of algedonic properties. But it is the Stoic legacy that enables him to go further, fleshing out the proposal Aristotle merely adumbrates. The following passages illustrate how the two legacies are combined here: It would be lupē that is opposite to pleasure in an unqualified way. (PE 126.13) It is lupē, not ponos, that is opposite to pleasure; for ponos indicates a bodily oppression (θλῖψιν), and is some sort of lupē, but not lupē without qualification. Lupē, in the general sense, means a certain disposition of the soul, whether it supervenes on an oppression of the body or some disposition of the soul. (PE 125.32–35) The distinction between lupē and ponos is established by a criterion I would call the degree of experiential realisation. Lupē is pain without qualification, not only because it is essentially a psychological state, but, more importantly, because it is a more robust experience made up of an impression (physical or psychical) with its affirmation, which considerably reflects what kind of person she is in virtue of her inclination to whatever motion happens in her body or the soul. In comparison, ponos is different. It remains on the level of raw sensation or impression, without the participation of the reflective act of the soul, so that, for Alexander, it is at best pain in a limited sense.58 This strategy enables him to explain why pain is bad in its strict sense, while allowing for some pains or unpleasant experiences not to be so negatively valued, though, via a detour of the marriage with Stoicism. It also maintains Aristotle’s belief that pleasure and pain are contraries by insisting on a stricter understanding of the pain (lupē) in question.59

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In PE 125.33, λύπην τινά is contrasted with λύπη ἁπλῶς, so that the former cannot refer to a particular kind of lupē (pace Sharples’s translation), because the relation in question is not that between whole and part or between a set and its subset. The indefinite article should be understood as a constraint on, or a modification of, the central term. Alexander, who seems to be more concerned with the classification of pain, does not follow the Stoics further by dividing pleasure into two kinds namely the elation of the body and the relaxation of the soul, even if this distinction is not unfamiliar to him (see In Top. 181.2–4 = Mayhew T48). Moreover, it is interesting to see that in a recent study, Price (2017, 206) accuses Aristotle of failing to use hēdesthai and chairein to distinguish between enjoyment and gladness. By contrast, Alexander helps Aristotle to develop a distinction in the case of pain, but he does not seem to feel the need to divide pleasure in a parallel way.

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Good Pains?

Although it has become clear why Alexander sets out to constrain the scope of lupē in Aristotle, one may still wonder why he decides to choose ponos (a term that does not seem to be at the core of Aristotle’s account of pleasure and pain), rather than other pain-words (for example, odunē, algos, etc.), to build a contrast with the experience of lupē. It may be more puzzling that Alexander, in the same text, differentiates lupē from ponos in other ways, which strikingly disregards his Stoicised proposal mentioned above: Not even every lupē is a bad thing, if at any rate in these [cases] too virtue aims at the mean (τοῦ μέσου), and there are certain [types of] lupē and ponos that are proper to the good man (οἰκεῖαι τῷ σπουδαίῳ). And ponos might be wider than (κοινότερον) lupē; for lupē is some sort of ponos. (PE 127.8–10) Ponos is not all bad; for what comes about for the sake of noble things (τῶν καλῶν χάριν) deserves to be chosen. (PE 137.9–10) In the first passage Alexander claims that there are pains in which virtues can be found, pains that are “proper to the good man” (οἰκεῖαι τῷ σπουδαίῳ). Before asking what kinds of pains they are, it is notable that Alexander does not limit them to ponoi, but he uses ponos and lupē loosely in referring to this particular group, as if it is not useful to distinguish them for this purpose.60 Surprisingly, however, without pinpointing what the purported good pains are, he goes on to distinguish between ponos and lupē in a different way, according to which lupē becomes a subset of ponos (PE 127.9–10). Why, then, does Alexander take up a broad concept of ponos while suggesting that some lupai and ponoi, in particular some ponoi, are good in the sense that they are “proper to the good man” and “for the sake of noble things”? Madigan seems very uncertain about Alexander’s intention of speaking ponos.61 Sharples’ suggestion—“a virtuous action may involve the pain of phys-

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For such uses of lupē and ponos, also see λῦπαί τινες αἱρεταὶ καὶ πόνοι, 127.17; λύπης καὶ πόνων, 144.11 and Baltussen (this volume, Ch. 2). Madigan’s hesitation about Alexander’s intention is reflected by his paraphrasis of this argument: “not every pain is evil, if virtue aims at the mean, and there are psychic (?) pains and physical (?) pains proper to the virtuous man” ([1987], 1267; the question marks are Madigan’s).

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ical effort without occasioning distress” (my italic)—can hardly work,62 because Alexander makes explicit that ponos is wider than lupē. In view of this dilemma, one might suggest that PE 127.9–10 does not necessarily mean that lupē is a particular type of ponos, but it indicates that ponos can be a more common phenomenon than lupē if κοινότερον at 127.10 is construed literally. In other words, physical affliction/toil—a popular meaning of ponos widely attested in archaic and classical antiquity63—can be experienced almost by all people, whereas lupē, in the sense of grief, sorrow, or anxiety, is experienced only by some of them, or, under more specific conditions. From this perspective, lupē is some sort of ponos insofar as both are experienced as unpleasant. This interpretation, I think, at best shows that ponos cannot be avoided in some good actions, perhaps owing to the limitation of human competence, but it remains dubious that it can be intrinsically good. Even worse, if ponos, in general, refers to bodily affliction, its badness seems to have a stronger sense of intuitiveness. Alternatively, if we constrain the scope of the ethical value, it would be more promising to take ponoi in the sense of bodily toils as valueneutral, because it is hard to conceive how they constitute the ethical value of the activities in which they are involved, regardless of whether they are viewed in a positive or negative way. Finally, the understanding of ponos as physical pain/toil, in fact, violates Alexander’s description of this kind of ponos in another place, where it is said to come from the soul: The so-called ponos related to the soul, in the way that some people are characterised as “lovers of toil” (φιλόπονοι), is not even opposed to pleasure in the first place; at any rate, its occurrence is accompanied by pleasure. (PE 126.16–17) This passage, I think, gives an approximation for the reason why ponos, in general, can be said to be more common than lupē, while some ponoi are positively valued on account of ponos’ particular, yet primitive connotation, that is, its close link with the philoponos—being painstaking, industrious, and loving hard work (LSJ s.v.)—a virtue or a good character.64 It also accounts for why some ponoi are said to be products of the soul, as well as not opposite to, but concomitant with, pleasure. 62 63 64

Sharples (1990), 31. See also Baltussen’s chapter in the present volume. Whereas philoponia is not found in Aristotle’s comprehensive list of virtues, it is included in the list of virtues in the Stoic tradition. According to pseudo-Andronicus’ περὶ παθών / On Passions, for instance, the Stoic virtue of bravery (ἀνδρεία) consists just in philoponia, καρτερία, θαρραλεότης, μεγαλοψυχία and εὐψυχία (SFV iii.269, cf. iii.264.24).

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What, exactly, are these ponoi which are good, produced by the soul, and intertwined with pleasure? This characterisation appears bizarre from Aristotle’s point of view, since for him the mixture of pleasure with pain occurs either in what he calls accidental pleasures or in what we call emotions, but their coexistence does not undermine the fact that they are opposites. One might—following and expanding Sharples’ proposal—suggest that the ponos in question should be any kind of—not merely physical—effort or exertion that is necessary for carrying out a virtuous action, such as some sort of fear involved in a brave activity. Or, is the function of ponos like Aquinas’ tristitia moderata, which is supposed to be a necessary condition for one’s ascent by training one’s intellectual capacity?65 Perhaps ponos is the price that must be paid for, or a means to, the acquisition of a certain excellence and achievement in the process of human ethical or intellectual formation: a painful route of learning by suffering. No one would deny that pains can be necessitated by some good things or be sources of edification or personal growth. Similar views are shared by contemporary psychology, according to which “[…] people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength, fulfilment, and personal development”.66 But no matter whether ponos is a necessary condition or can jointly produce a variety of human goodness, all these— for example, by enhancing one’s self-mastery, stimulating new activity, or reconfiguring life attitude—disclose an instrumental value assigned to such an experience, which has not yet proven ponos itself to be something that we appreciate as good. In other words, Alexander owes us a story that ensures a tight or ‘internal’ connection between ponos and good. For this purpose, again, I think, his gloss of ponos as philoponos gives us a clue. The message delivered here is not confined to the association of ponos with a particular virtue, it also implies that pain, being constitutive of certain good activities, can be what a virtuous person actively looks for. Just as ponos is indispensable for, and integral to, the state of a philoponos, pain in this sense—as something good rather than a natural/causal necessity or an instrument—contributes to the goodness of a virtue or the achievement of a person as a whole. To be more precise, a person who can be qualified as philoponos should voluntarily dedicate him or herself to good things that themselves are challenging, risky, or hard work. They are activities that can be performed well only with a certain practical, technical, or cognitive effort.67 Running a mara65 66 67

Miner (2009), 200–201. Haidt (2006), 136. See a similar distinction in Hursthouse (1999), 94–97.

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thon, for instance, usually includes strenuous exertion, challenging fatigue, and the experiences of pain, which, as indispensable components of this action, however, all constitute the reason for many runners to enjoy and value the whole experience. Indeed, just as some games are too easy to please a skilled player, some good tasks are too easy to prompt and manifest one’s virtue. For this reason, a good player loves the whole process (not only the end) of a challenging game in a similar way in which a philoponos (a person who is willing to seek challenges and face obstacles) enjoys the whole process of the performance of a virtuous act which often requires no less ingenuity, attention, and skill. Therefore, the more this person encounters challenge and resistance (given not much beyond his or her capacities), the more (s)he enjoys the activity in which his and her excellence is actualised, manifested, and sometimes enhanced. Pain involved here, as the phrase “ἡ ἀρετὴ τοῦ μέσου στοχαστική” (127.8–9) implies, like some good pleasures, permits no excess in nature and is proper to the activity and the philoponos.68 While what we have so far gained seems to be an ancient precursor of the difficulty (and effort) based on an account of achievement, recently advocated by Bradford (2015) and many others,69 its occurrence in Alexander can also be historically understood in light of a passage from his Commentary on the Prior Analytics. To illustrate how to construct an argument that aims at a universal negative conclusion, he adduces several examples from the debates over the evaluation of pleasure and pain. One of them is strikingly the converse of the AfC used by Aristotle and Eudoxus: if someone wants to prove that every pleasure is bad, she can resort to the premises (1) that every ponos is good and (2) that ponos is an opposite of pleasure. In this context, ponos is obviously employed as representing a general concept of pain, the pole opposite of pleasure. On the other hand, however, it is notable that unless the specific connotation of ponos is in operation, premise (1) can hardly be justified. Alexander is aware of the challenge. He thus goes on to explain why premise (1) obtains by reference to two reputable opinions (endoxa; cf. ἀληθές at In APr. 303.20). The first is that 68

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Parallel statements about pleasure are found in PE 126.27, according to which some pleasures are always proportionate and in the mean state (σύμμετρος, ἐν μεσότητι, 126.27), admitting of no excess (126.28, 126.31). They would be more desirable when they progress and are added to (126.29–30). Pleasures of this sort are in accordance with the virtue (126.30) and thus good by their own nature (126.31–32); cf. 127.35–128.2. Their basic idea, roughly, is that some difficulties have intrinsic value insofar as they are intrinsic to and constitutive of a process in which someone exerts much effort in performing the activity well and thus achieves the intended outcome. In the same spirit, Brady (2018) has recently argued for the non-instrumental value of pain/suffering, though from a different respective.

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“the gods give us all good things in place of ponoi” (In APr. 303.20–21), which is similar to a fragment attributed to Epicharmus (PCG fr. 271 = B36 DK) quoted by Xenophon (Mem. 2.1.20).70 And the second is that “for mortals good things increase from ponoi” (In APr. 303.21, also see Euripides Erechtheus fr. 364).71 Interestingly, they are the very endoxa that had been used by Adrastus from Aphrodisias, a Peripatetic commentator active prior to Alexander,72 to argue that ponos appears good (Anonymi in Eth. Nic. 153.20–22).73 The evidence suggests that there had been a long tradition which somehow sought to justify the ethical status of ponos. This even attracted the Peripatetics’ attention before Alexander, so that it comes as no surprise that he addressed the same problem in his own manner. As we have seen, he is concerned to establish a more intimate link between ponos and good, because he realises that the traditional proposals—ponos is good in virtue of its function either as a prerequisite or as a source for something good—are insufficient if one wants to vindicate the goodness of ponos itself. From this perspective, what he achieves (or experiments with) is a reconciliation of the friends of ponos with Aristotle’s general negative attitude to pain in an interesting fashion.74

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A distinguishing feature of PE is that Alexander, while sanguine about almost everything Aristotle said about pleasure, appears to oscillate between different ways in which one may conceptualise and evaluate pain. No doubt, he wants to 70

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Epicharmus’ fragment was already used by Xenophon in conjunction with Hesiod Works and Days 287–292 and Prodicus’ Choice of Hercules to persuade his readers that ponos is required for achieving happiness; see Wolfsdorf (2008) and (2012), 27–28. From the context of Epicharmus’ quotation, it is tempting to conjecture, as many scholars suggest, that Xenophon, who associates ponos with education and virtue, might have in hand a collection of gnomes with a ponos-motive as sources for this passage (cf. Mem. 1.2.56); see Kerkhof (2001), 86–88. The diction of Euripides is preserved in Stobaeus 3.29.9 and 3.29.22, with a slight difference, cf.: Ἐκ τῶν πόνων τοι τἀγάθ’ αὔξεται βροτοῖς. For similar views, see Thuc. 1.131.1: ἐκ τῶν πόνων τὰς ἀρετὰς κτᾶσθαι; Eur. Supp. 323: ἐν γὰρ τοῖς πόνοισιν αὔξεται; 577: πονοῦσα πολλὰ πόλλ’ εὐδαιμονεῖ. For Adrastus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, see Mercken (1990), 421–424. These gnomic phrases are preserved in Stobaeus’ anthology with the title Περὶ φιλοπονία. The Epicharmus’ fragment, alongside Xenophon’s whole passages, recurs in Stobaeus under the category Περὶ ἀρετῆς (Stobaeus 3.1.205b). Aristotle’s disagreement with the friends of ponos is well reflected by Hirji’s Aristotleinspired refutation against Bradford, the modern heir of this ponos-friendly tradition, see Hirji (2019), cf. Cheng (2019).

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explain pain, based on Aristotle’s accounts of pleasure, in an Aristotelian way, although Aristotle’s account offers little flesh to put on the bones of Alexander’s idiosyncratic approach. It is thus not surprising that Alexander draws support either from the Stoic theory of passion or the alien supervenience, a mirroring image or logical expansion of what he takes to be Aristotle’s central teaching of affective states, to figure out what pains actually are and how to evaluate them in reasonable ways. Admittedly, both schemas contain a kernel of truth, illuminating the different ways pains are connected to activities or judgements. Nevertheless, the questions of whether there is a unified theory of pain, comparable to Aristotle’s doctrine of pleasure, and how both accounts are related to each other still remains open. Perhaps it is futile to search for the unique Alexandrean theory of pain. However, its discussions show that he is more sensitive than Aristotle to the varieties of pain and how algedonic properties are related to each other. Aristotle no doubt admits that pains are not simple and homogenous, but he seems to be unconcerned to capture how pain (singular) relates to pains (plural) and other unpleasant experiences. It is Alexander who experiments with various ways of grasping the nature of pain and detects distinct ways pain functions as a contrary of pleasure. Unpleasant experiences that are realised on different levels to different degrees should be distinguished and evaluated differently. Whereas some of them resemble ‘throbs’ or ‘pressure’, raw feelings caused by exterior senses, others may involve a more distinctive phenomenology with a negative co-attitude, an assent to the affective change in the body or in the soul. Whereas some pains depend on activities in term of the alien supervenience, which annoy, hinder, or even destroy the ongoing activities, others are connected with activities in a more positive way, and either contribute to or constitute their performance. Taken together, these conclusions produce three important lessons. Firstly, even though pleasure and pain are often taken to be contraries (both for Aristotle and in ordinary thought), we should be careful about this opposition-relation, despite its validity. In particular, this relation neither entails that every pain is opposed to a corresponding pleasure in the same way nor that all we can say about pain is well reflected by what we have found out about pleasure in terms of a contrasting method. Because pain is not always a mirroring image of pleasure, what the mirroring method, based on a given knowledge of pleasure, can tell about pain is inevitably limited or even sometimes misleading. For this reason, pain, despite remaining an important opposite of pleasure, deserves an independent consideration. Secondly, the affinity supervenience is Aristotle’s central idea about pleasure, at least in Eth. Nic. x, and the account Alexander develops in explaining

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pain indeed yields insights into some interesting aspects of such experience. Nevertheless, this account says little about the nature of the pain itself; in particular, it omits pain of some other types, which either are not accompanied by activities, but simply caused by burns, pressure, cuts and the like, or dependent on, yet not alien to, some activities. In any case, whatever an Aristotelian theory of pain would look like, it is not promising to rely too much on his baffling account of the supervenience in Eth. Nic. x. Third and last, when Alexander shows a complex interweaving of the Peripatetic ethics with the Stoic theory of passion, it is not simply because of his eclectic inclination or a linguistic contamination popular at that time. Rather, as I argued, the problems surrounding pleasure and pain drive him to go beyond his Aristotelianism in order to do more justice to the phenomenon of pain and all its varieties. The Stoic notions and terminology, a more contemporary source, enable him to cash out in more current language what Aristotle had only hinted at.75

References Editions and Translations Alexander of Aphrodisias. (1883) Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. M. Wallies (ed.), Alexandri in Aristotelis Analyticorum priorum librum i commentarium. (CAG 2.1). Berlin: Reimer. Alexander of Aphrodisias. (1891) Commentary on Aristotle’s Topics. M. Wallies (ed.), Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis Topicorum libros octo commentaria. (CAG 2.2). Berlin: Reimer. Alexander of Aphrodisias. (1892) Ethical Problems. I. Bruns (ed.), Alexandri Aphrodisiensis praeter commentaria scripta minora. Quaestiones. De Fato. De Mixtione. (CAG suppl. ii.2). Berlin: Reimer. Alexander of Aphrodisias. (1990) Ethical Problems. R.W. Sharples (transl.), Alexander of Aphrodisias. Ethical Problems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Anomymus. (1892) Ethica Nicomachea. G. Heylbut (ed.), Eustratii et Michaelis et anonyma in Ethica Nicomachea commentaria. (CAG 20). Berlin, pp. 122–255. Aristotle (1991) Ethica Eudemia. R.R. Waltzer & J.M. Mingay (eds), Aristotelis Ethica Eudemia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristotle. (1963) Ethica Nicomachea. I. Bywater (ed.), Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 75

It was quite common among the Peripatetics to utilise Stoicism for their own purposes, see Baltussen (2016), 85, 94.

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Aspasius. (1889) Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. G. Heylbut (ed.), Aspasii in Ethica Nicomachea quae supersunt commentaria. (CAG 19.1–2). Berlin: Reimer. Diels, H. & Kranz, W. (eds) (1964) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. (DK). Berlin: Weidmann. Dorandi, T. (ed.) (2013) Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers. (Diog. Laert.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fortenbaugh, W. & Huby, P. & Sharples, R. & Gutas, D. (eds) (1992) Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. (FHSG). Leiden: Brill. Jacoby, F. (ed.) (1923ff.) Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker. (FGrHist). Berlin: Weidmann. Long, A.A. & Sedley, D.N. (eds) (1987) The Hellenistic Philosophers. (LS). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kassel, R. & Austin, C. (eds) (1983) Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. 1. (PCG). (eds). Berlin: De Gruyter. Plato. (1993) Philebus. D. Frede (transl.). Indianapolis: Hackett. Plutarch. (1966) De libidine et aegritudine. M. Pohlenz & K. Ziegler (eds), Plutarchus Moralia, vol. vi/fasc 3. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. Posidonius. (2005) Posidonius: The Fragments. L. Edelstein & I.G. Kidd (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [repr. of 1972]. Prodicus. (2011) Prodicus the Sophist: Texts, Translations, and Commentary. R. Mayhew (ed.). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Stobaeus. (1884–1912) Anthologium, 5 vols. C. Wachsmuth & O. Hense (eds). Berlin: Weidmann. von Arnim, H. (ed.) (1903–1924) Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. (SVF). Leipzig: Teubner. Theophrastus. (2002) On Fatigue. M. Sollenberger, W. Fortenbaugh, & R. Sharples (eds), Theophrastus of Eresus: On Sweat, on Dizziness and on Fatigue. Leiden: Brill.

Modern Scholarship Aufderheide, J. (2020) Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book x: Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baltussen, H. (2016) The Peripatetics: Aristotle’s Heirs 322bce–200 ce. London, New York: Routledge. Bradford, G. (2015) Achievement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brady, M. (2018) Suffering and Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castelli, L. (2015) ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: Methodological Issues and Argumentative Strategies between the Ethical Problems and the Commentary on the Topics’, in M. Bonelli (ed.), Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia (Questioni etiche e Mantissa): Metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica. Naples: Bibliopolis, pp. 19–42. Cheng, W. (2018) ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle’, in W. Harris (ed.), Pleasure and Pain in Classical Times. Leiden: Brill, pp. 174–200.

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Cheng, W. (2019) ‘Aristotle’s Vocabulary of Pain’, Philologus 163(1): 47–71. Cheng, W. (2020) ‘Aristotle and Eudoxus on the Argument from Contraries’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 102(4): 588–618. Gill, C. (2010) Naturalistic Psychology in Galen and Stoicism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gosling, J.C.B. & Taylor C.C.W. (1982) The Greeks on Pleasure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haidt, J. (2006) The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science. London: Random House. Heinaman, R. (2011) ‘Pleasure as an Activity in the Nicomachean Ethics’, in M. Pakaluk & G. Pearson (eds), Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 7–45. Hirji, S. (2019) ‘Not Always Worth the Effort: Difficulty and the Value of Achievement’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100: 525–548. Hursthouse, R. (1999) On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keller, S. (2004). ‘Welfare and the Achievement of Goals’, Philosophical Studies 121: 27– 41. Kerkhof, R. (2001) Dorische Posse, Epicharm und Attische Komödie. München: Saur. Kim, J. (1993) Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Konstan, D. (2018) ‘On Grief and Pain’, in W. Harris (ed.), Pleasure and Pain in Classical Times. Leiden: Brill, pp. 201–212. Madigan, A. (1987) ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: The Book of Ethical Problems’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (Berlin: De Gruyter), ii 36.2: 1260–279. Mattern, S.P. (2016) ‘Galen’s Anxious Patients: lypē as Anxiety Disorder’, in G. Petridou & C. Thumiger (eds), Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 203–213. Mercken, H.P.F. (1990) ‘The Greek Commentators on Aristotle’s Ethics’, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 407–443. Miner, R. (2009) Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 22–48. Natali, C. (2015) ‘La scuola di Alessandro su piacere e sofferenza (Quaest. Eth. 5/4, 6, 7, 16)’, in M. Bonelli (ed.), Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia (Questioni etiche e Mantissa): Metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica. Naples: Bibliopolis, pp. 59– 86. Philippson, R. (1925) ‘Akademische Verhandlungen über die Lustlehre’, Hermes 60: 444– 481. Price, A. (2017) ‘Varieties of pleasure in Plato and Aristotle’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 52: 177–208. Sharples, R.W. (1987) ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and Innovation’, H. Tem-

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porini & W. Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt (Berlin: De Gruyter), ii 36.2: pp. 1176–1243. Sharples, R.W. (1990) Alexander of Aphrodisias. Ethical Problems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vogt, K.M. (2018) ‘What is Hedonism?’, in W. Harris (ed), Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times Leiden: Brill, pp. 93–110. Warren, J. (2009) ‘Aristotle on Speusippus on Eudoxus on pleasure’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 36: 249–281. Weiss, R. (1979) ‘Aristotle’s Criticism of Eudoxan Hedonism’, Classical Philology 74: 214– 221. Wolfsdorf, D. (2008) ‘Hesiod, Prodicus, and the Socratics on Work and Pleasure’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 35: 1–18. Wolfsdorf, D. (2012) Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

chapter 9

Traumatic Pain and the Transformation of Identity: Prudentius and Ovid Compared Jacqueline Clarke

Trauma is a state of disruption caused by stressors severe enough to threaten life or make one believe that one is about to die. Trauma can split and fragment the mind in various biopsychosocial survival patterns, including various weightings of awareness and unawareness. Disruptions may radiate to any or all levels of human functions, ranging from anatomical and physiological to existential and spiritual.1

∵ Pain, without doubt, can have a number of profound and far-reaching effects on the psyche.2 It has the potential to challenge or fragment identity, particularly when it arises from, or is associated with, visible tissue damage to the body.3 As the statement above suggests, trauma, including that induced by extreme or extensive bodily damage, results in acute psychological disruption; the breaching of the skin’s barrier can assault a person’s sense of inviolability and bring their sense of self into question. This is one of the ways in which torture exerts its power over victims,4 and many torture instruments and methods of torture

1 Valent (2012), 678. 2 My thanks to all those who participated in the Exeter workshop for their comments and suggestions to improve this paper. Other papers at this workshop also provided valuable insights into the complexities of the phenomenon of pain, many of which I worked into this chapter. 3 For reactions to severe tissue damage and the way in which it can destroy “personhood”, see Scarry (2007), 284–286. 4 “Torture intrudes into the most private and intimate parts of a human and attacks the one place where a person’s intimacy, integrity, and inviolability is supposed to be guaranteed, the person’s body and mind. The complex and long-lasting after-effects of torture stem from the deliberate, repeated, and brutal invasion and destruction of this ‘sacred place’.” Hárdi & Kroó (2011), 133.

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are devised not only to induce extreme physical pain but also to generate mental anguish, by damaging the bodies of the tortured in ways that distort their external identity.5 Greco-Roman myths often deal with traumatic situations, not least the trauma and pain of bodily damage. There are mythological figures such as Prometheus, Philoctetes and Heracles who endure profound, prolonged, and mind-altering pain because of the acute or extensive tissue damage that their bodies sustain. Traumatic pain and the tissue damage produced by torture are likewise a common focus in martyrdom accounts, with pain usually perceived as central to the experience of martyrdom.6 This chapter will explore the intersection between mythical paradigms of traumatic pain and martyrdom. It undertakes a close reading of a highly graphic depiction of torture of a mythical figure (Ovid’s description of the flaying of Marsyas at Metamorphoses 6.382– 400) and uses this as a basis for analysing an excerpt from the Peristephanon, which describes the torture of a Christian martyr in a similarly graphic fashion (Vincent at Perist. 5.93–128). It has already been demonstrated that Prudentius’ representations of martyrs are significantly indebted to Classical mythology;7 this chapter concentrates on what his depiction of a martyr’s traumatic pain may owe to the suffering of a mythical figure, a figure who is so traumatised by his torture that his identity is irrevocably fragmented. Ovid’s depiction of the flaying of Marsyas has been chosen for comparison with the account of torture from the Peristephanon for three main reasons. The first is simply because Ovid’s description of the effect of trauma on Marsyas’ body and mind is so vivid and, as we will see, conveys the physiological and psychological effects of traumatic pain so well. The second reason is that Marsyas was a compelling and multi-faceted figure, who was employed at Rome both

5 Roman methods of torture included the rack (eculeus) which distended the joints and muscles, the claws (ungulae) which opened the interior of the body to view, the use of torches, pitch, or red-hot metal to scald the flesh, and scourging with whips or other instruments that were designed to lacerate or even shred the body. (Fagan [2010]). 6 See, for instance, Roberts (1993), 55–56; Perkins (1995), 108–109, 142; Grig (2004), 65–67, 70– 71. It must be noted, however, that a recent work by L. Stephanie Cobb (2017) on this topic has argued that pain is not a “locus of meaning” in early Christian martyr texts (64); Cobb, instead, argues that martyrs, by and large, are represented as “insensitive” to pain when they are being tortured because God has taken the pain away (154). Without commenting on the extent to which Cobb’s arguments have validity for other martyr texts, in my opinion her theory is a little simplistic when applied to the torture accounts in the Peristephanon; on this, see below. 7 Malamud (1989).

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to signify the punishment of hubris and as a symbol of libertas.8 Ovid, in particular, seems to associate Marsyas with libertas and makes use of his myth to represent the suppression of speech and the silencing of his own poetic voice under Augustus.9 The aspects of Marsyas that Ovid has chosen to highlight in his works are character traits that are also evident in many of Prudentius’ martyrs, namely a propensity to challenge authority and speak truth to power. And finally, since the Metamorphoses is a work that is all about transformations, Ovid largely focuses on the way in which the mutilation of Marsyas’ body transforms him into something else. In the Peristephanon, likewise, torture, particularly torture that deforms or mutilates the body, is often a key element in the process of transfiguration to martyrdom. It is this last aspect that will be the major focus of this chapter: how both Ovid and Prudentius make use of traumatic pain as an instrument of transformation. Roman poets seem to have had a fondness for verbal manipulation, for using language in puns or riddles or playing upon etymologies; their inclination to play verbal games in their poetry indicates that their educated audience would have been sensitive to subtexts and receptive to multiples of meaning in their poems.10 In creating the genre of the martyr poem, Prudentius was thus drawing upon a pagan poetic tradition that offered him great resources of language to interrogate the concept of pain and explore its transformative power. And so, by comparing a pagan poetic representation of traumatic pain with a Christian one, this chapter aims to throw further light on the relationship between pain and identity in both the pagan and Christian mindset.

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According to Niżyńska (2001), 152, “It was not accidental that at least by Pliny’s time, and probably much earlier, Zeuxis’ (430–390 bce) painting Marsyas religatus was hung in the temple of Concordia in Rome as a warning to those who might disturb the concord of the state (Plin. HN 35.66)”. But there seems to have been a transition from an Italic Marsyas, renowned for augury and wisdom, and represented by a statue in the forum which was identified with Liber and plebeian interests (Small [1982], 68–69; Fantham [2005], 220), to a Phrygian figure punished by Apollo for hubris. This is especially apparent with Ovid’s allusion to the myth of Marsyas in the Fasti (6.649– 710) where it seems to be placed as a climax to a long discussion of freedom of speech in the last “pre-Julian” months of the calendar; see further, Niżyńska (2001), 153. In the Met. Ovid’s identification of Apollo with Augustus is also evident at the beginning (1.551–563) and end (15.865); later in the Tristia he speaks of his exile in language that recalls Marsyas’ punishment (Tr. 1.3.73–74). See Chapter 2 of Malamud (1989) on the word games that Latin poets can play in their poetry. According to Malamud (1989), 41, late antique and Christian Latin poetry accentuated this tendency. On the predilection for verbal games in late antique poetry see also Pelttari (2014), 13–22, 75, 161.

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As a means of inflicting traumatic pain and destroying identity, the ungula or claw was a highly effective torture instrument and a device to which Prudentius’ torturers often resorted.11 Its peculiar obscenity was to scrape or comb the flesh from a victim’s body and open it up while leaving the person still alive. In the way in which it deprived the victim of skin and opened the interior of the body to view, the claw has similarities to flaying; it is for this reason that we will examine an episode where Prudentius describes how the claw is used on the body of a martyr. The episode selected for examination in this chapter, Perist. 5.93–128, is the third detailed description in the Peristephanon of the effects of the claw on a body. The first two, in Perist. 3 and 4 respectively, describe what this instrument does to the bodies of female martyrs: Eulalia (3.126–145) and Encratis (4.109–140). While these both have interesting aspects, the account from Perist. 5 of the use of the claw on a male martyr, Vincent, is the one which can most easily be compared with Ovid’s description of Marsyas’ flaying; this is partly because Vincent, like Marsyas, is male,12 but also because, as we will see, Prudentius plays up the conflict between Vincent and the governor Datianus in a way that recalls the rivalry between Marsyas and Apollo. We can be reasonably confident that Prudentius was well acquainted with Book 6 of the Metamorphoses, where the story of Marsyas appears, because it has been shown that his depiction of the transformation of Loth’s wife in the Hamartigenia was likely to have been based in part on Ovid’s description of Niobe that also appears in Met. 6.13 But this chapter does not attempt to prove that Ovid’s depiction of Marsyas directly influenced Prudentius’ depiction of Vincent’s torture, nor indeed any of his representations of his martyrs’ pain. None of Prudentius’ works mention Marsyas and, unlike the martyr Hippolytus in Perist. 11 who has an obvious association with his pagan counterpart,14 there is no one martyr in the Peristephanon who can be directly equated with Marsyas. On the other hand, it is highly likely that Prudentius’ audience would have been aware of Marsyas and would most probably have been familiar with

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The ungula (also referred to as the uncus in these poems) is alluded to fifteen times in the Peristephanon: 1.44, 3.133, 4.138, 5.61, 5.120, 5.174, 5.337, 5.551, 10.73, 10.110, 10.484, 10.557, 10.695, 11.57, 11.63. Gender plays a part in Prudentius’ descriptions of what the claw does to the bodies of Eulalia and Encratis: Encratis’ breast is torn off (4.123–124) and Eulalia bleeds copiously (144–145), something which scholars have associated with the blood of virginity. On the gendered nature of Eulalia’s and Encratis’ tortures see Ross (1995), 343; Clarke (2021), 393, 396. Dykes (2011), 98. See Malamud (1989), 82–87.

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Ovid’s description of him.15 Thus the analysis of Ovid’s depiction of Marsyas will be employed as a foil, to provide a background for the examination of Prudentius’ account of a martyr’s torture in ways that should bring greater depth and understanding to it. The following questions will be posed in this chapter. Does Prudentius’ description of extreme trauma upon the body evoke pain in similar ways to Ovid’s description of Marsyas? How does Prudentius’ description condition the viewer to see past the trauma of the mutilation, given that one of the effects of torture, as we will see with Marsyas, is to turn the victim into an object? And finally, what roles does traumatic pain play in the process of transforming someone into a martyr in Prudentius’ poems and how is this similar to and different from the transformations that are effected on Marsyas?

1

Ovid’s Marsyas: Traumatic Pain and Fragmentation of Identity

Sic ubi nescioquis Lycia de gente virorum rettulit exitium, Satyri reminiscitur alter, quem Tritoniaca Letous harundine victum 385 adfecit poena. “quid me mihi detrahis?” inquit; “a! piget, a! non est” clamabat “tibia tanti.” clamanti cutis est summos direpta per artus, nec quidquam nisi vulnus erat; cruor undique manat detectique patent nervi trepidaeque sine ulla 390 pelle micant venae; salientia viscera possis et perlucentes numerare in pectore fibras. illum ruricolae, silvarum numina, Fauni et Satyri fratres et tunc quoque carus Olympus et nymphae flerunt et quisquis montibus illis 395 lanigerosque greges armentaque bucera pavit. fertilis immaduit madefactaque terra caducas concepit lacrimas ac venis perbibit imis; quas ubi fecit aquam, vacuas emisit in auras.

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In addition to the fact that Servius, Prudentius’ contemporary, alludes to the figure of Marsyas several times in his commentary on the Aeneid (A. 3.20, 3.359), the myth is also mentioned by Claudian (in Eutr. 2.255–271), who shows awareness of Ovid’s account of Marsyas from the Fasti. Prudentius references Claudian’s work (as Claudian perhaps does Prudentius’) and thus they were working in a common cultural milieu; see further Vanderspoel (1986), 244–245; Palmer (1989), 197–198.

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inde petens †rapidum† ripis declivibus aequor Marsya nomen habet, Phrygiae liquidissimus amnis.16 Thus, when someone from the Lycian race Recalled the death of men, another mentioned [the death] of the satyr Whom, defeated by Tritonia’s reed, the son of Leto Brought to punishment. “Why do you drag me from myself?” He cried “Ah! It’s dreadful, ah!” He kept shouting “a flute isn’t worth so much.” While still screaming, his skin is stripped from the surface of his limbs, Nor was he anything except a wound; blood flowed everywhere, His uncovered nerves lie exposed, and without any hide His quivering veins flickered; you could count his dancing organs And the lobes gleaming in his lungs. Him the country-dwellers, deities of the woods, fauns And their brother satyrs and Olympus who was also then beloved And the nymphs wept, and whoever in those mountains Pastured the wool-bearing flock and horned herd. And the fertile earth grew wet and soaked through, gathered Their fallen tears and drank it deep in its veins. Tears which when it produced water, it sent back into the empty air. From this swiftly seeking the sea over sloping banks A river which held the name Marsyas, clearest of Phrygia.

The nineteen lines of the Marsyas episode at Metamorphoses 6.382–400 are ones which have intrigued and puzzled many scholars and, as we will see below, there is much discussion about how to interpret them and about how Ovid’s audience may have responded to them. This chapter will, therefore, read the episode from three different perspectives, to acquire the maximum understanding of it. To show how well Ovid conveys the physiological and psychological effects of traumatic pain, the Marsyas episode will firstly be examined from the perspective of current research into pain and torture. Consideration will then be given to its socio-cultural background to try to gauge whether, and the extent to which, Ovid’s readers may have responded differently it. Finally, it will be analysed as a piece of literature, in recognition of the fact that Roman poets, Ovid not the least, employed language in subtle and allusive ways to alert their readers to interpretations that they may not have wished to make obvious.

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All quotations from Ovid’s Metamorphoses are taken from Tarrant (2004). All quotations from Prudentius are taken from Cunningham (1966). Translations are my own.

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If we examine this episode from Ovid in the light of Elaine Scarry’s influential theories about the physical and psychological effects of trauma and extreme pain on the body, we can see that in many respects it might be almost a textbook illustration of them. Ovid introduces the story in medias res. The contest between Marsyas and Apollo and the reasons for his flaying are passed over very quickly. The agent of his torture, Apollo, is given little attention. Instead, the focus is all on Marsyas and his body which, to paraphrase Scarry, has become his enemy and has expanded to fill his world.17 Scarry’s theories about the way in which torture can “deconstruct” a victim’s voice18 are confirmed by Marsyas’ utterances which become increasingly shorter and more staccato: after his initial question, his speech is broken up by the pre-linguistic exclamation A! (386) and then deteriorates from speaking (inquit, 385) to shouting or screaming (clamabat, 386; clamanti, 387), a scream which is abruptly terminated as his skin is stripped from him. It is noteworthy that Ovid does not actually use a Latin term for pain in this passage (the most common term dolor does not appear at all); instead, he firstly employs Marsyas’ anguished vocalisations to indicate his pain and then conveys the satyr’s pain with a gruesome description of the mutilations that are inflicted on his body. Scarry has argued that it is so difficult to communicate the experience of another’s pain that the description of a wound inflicted upon a body, or a metaphor of wounding is often used instead associatively to convey pain.19 It is largely Ovid’s description of what is done to Marsyas’ body, the way that Ovid enters into his experience, that makes us feel the satyr’s pain. In depriving Marsyas of his skin, Apollo’s method of killing is especially cruel, for skin not only constitutes the barrier between self and the world,20 but is also what confers physical identity. Ovid makes it clear that Marsyas is well aware of his loss of self, as the first sentence that he puts into his mouth, quid me mihi detrahis? (385), attests. Indeed, the anonymous narrator of Ovid’s tale, who is describing Marsyas’ punishment to some peasants, makes a telling remark, commenting that once the skin has been stripped from his limbs, Marsyas is nothing but a wound (nec quidquam nisi vulnus erat, 388); as Elena Theodorakopoulos acutely observes, what remains of Marsyas is, “no longer

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“It is the intense pain that destroys a person’s self and world, a destruction experienced spatially as … the body swelling to fill the entire universe.” (1985), 35; “… the person in great pain experiences his own body as the agent of his agony.” (1985), 47. Scarry (1985), 20, 54. Scarry (1985), 15–16. Rey (1995), 5.

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even worthy of a masculine pronoun”.21 One of the effects of Apollo’s punishment is to transform Marsyas into a grotesque object, a ‘thing’ rather than a being with whom humans can connect. When pain arises from trauma to the exterior of the body, it can be doubly isolating; to quote Scarry, … the obscenity of body damage … wrongly makes the person in pain seem obscene, or alternatively, creates a surface to which we have such a strong visceral aversion, that we do not even notice that there is a person back in behind that flamboyantly broken skin … The word [obscene] registers the objection, the swift swerving away of the self, from any uninvited display of the interior of another person’s body.22 Scarry’s words encapsulate how torture with its associated tissue damage can sever the human bond between victim and onlookers. But obscenity, whether it is the obscenity of torture or is sexual, can give rise to contradictory impulses, for there is a desire to look toward as well as to look away.23 The Romans were well aware of this fact and their varied, often ingenious methods of torture in the arena were designed to appeal to an audience who were eager to gaze at all the forms of trauma to which bodies could be subjected.24 Some commentators, in fact, puzzled or even disturbed by the way in which Ovid focuses mainly on the violence done to Marsyas’ body, have theorised that Ovid was influenced by or was recalling the spectacle of prisoners being tortured in the arena.25 It has also been suggested that his detailed, almost anatomical description of Marsyas’ interior owes something to the growing curiosity in medical circles about the internal makeup of the body and the discoveries revealed by anatomical dissections.26 Apollo, of course, is the god of medicine as well as music and, in a sense, he is performing his own dissection of Marsyas or even perhaps, as Gianpiero Rosati suggests, an extispicium on his organs.27 But there is uncertainty about how Ovid’s original audience

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Theodorakopoulos (1999), 156. Scarry (2007), 285–286. Frankfurter (2009) esp. p. 228; King (2018, 174). Coleman (1990), esp. 58. Galinsky (1975), 134; Wilkinson (1955), 162; Segal, (1998), 36–37. Indeed, several commentators have drawn parallels between Ovid’s description of Marsyas’ flaying and Martial’s description of the punishment of a prisoner in the arena (Spect. 9) who, after being mauled by a bear is nothing but limbs dripping blood. Feldherr & James (2004), 88. According to Gleason (2009, 104), anatomists like Galen enjoyed exposing the beating heart of an animal to the fascinated gaze of spectators. Rosati (2013) 309–310. In many ways this is an attractive interpretation as it would suggest

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would have reacted to this clinical revelation of Marsyas’ internal make up; it is too simplistic to assume that his literate and educated audience would have responded with detachment because of their greater exposure to the violence of sacrifice or with voyeuristic enthusiasm like the thrill-seekers at the games.28 And if we examine this passage as a piece of literature, we can see that Ovid is using language in subtle and sophisticated ways that makes this more than merely a ‘blood and guts’ account. The way in which Ovid describes Marsyas’ body being opened up to the gaze has all the hallmarks of an ekphrasis. After his depiction of the skin being stripped from the body’s surface (summos direpta per artus, 387), Ovid draws the reader’s attention, firstly, to the copious amount of blood that flows everywhere (cruor undique manat, 388), an image that evokes colour as well as moisture,29 and then focuses on details of the body’s interior such as sinews, veins, and lobes. The elaboration of striking details helped to transform bare narration into ekphrasis30 and Ovid does make these details striking; he links them with a series of adjectives and verbs that heighten their impact on the mind’s eye of the reader. The terms trepidae (389) and salientia (390) convey how Marsyas’ internal organs quiver and convulse on exposure to the air, while micant (390) and perlucentes (391) also suggest the way in which they catch the light and gleam. The ekphrastic quality of this description is reinforced by the narrator’s apostrophe in vv. 390–391: viscera possis … numerare. A phrase such as this evokes those used by writers in ekphrases of famous paintings or statues; Callistratus, for example, makes use of comparable phrases in his descriptions of statues. So, for instance, when describing the statue of a satyr, Callistratus states, εἶδες ἂν ὑπανισταμένας καὶ φλέβας ὡς ἂν ἔκ τινος γεμιζομένας πνεύματος καὶ εἰς τὴν ἐπήχησιν τοῦ αὐλοῦ τὴν πνοὴν ἐκ στέρνων τὸν Σάτυρον ἀνασπῶντα (Stat. 1.3), of a statue of Eros says, εἶδες ἂν τὸν χαλκὸν θρυπτόμενον καὶ εἰς εὐσαρκίαν ἀμηχάνως χλι-

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that Ovid is alluding to the way in which Apollo is usurping the prophetic role that the old Etrusco-Roman Marsyas occupied during the Republic; on this see Niżyńska, 2001, 157– 158. But this is just one interpretation of these densely packed, allusive lines and does not exclude the others discussed below. “I do believe we should exercise caution in constructing a cultural norm among Ovid’s readership (including Ovid himself) that would conflate a literate and sophisticated audience with an undifferentiated mass attending the games and so assume a straightforwardly shared agenda of visual voyeurism”, Feldherr & James (2004), 89. Cruor is the first word in the phrase and its cognate adjective cruentus can be applied to things that are blood-red in colour: mulberries at Copa 21, the myrtle berry at Virgil Georgics. 1.306. The sense of moisture is conveyed by manare. Webb (2009), 72–73.

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δῶντα (Stat. 3.2) and, while describing a statue of Medea, he comments, ἦν ἰδεῖν τὴν λίθον ὁτὲ μὲν φέρουσαν τὸν θυμὸν ἐν ὄμμασιν (Stat. 13.3). In these ekphrases, phrases such as, “you could almost see”, “one would be able to see”, draw the reader in and compel him/her to admire the skilful way in which the artist’s handiwork imitates reality. According to Ruth Webb, “any ekphrasis is haunted by the idea of the work of art”;31 we should also recall that Marsyas was quite often depicted in Roman artwork and his statue in the forum at Rome was a landmark.32 So the phrase viscera possis … numerare might well suggest a skilfully executed painting or statue to Ovid’s readers and emphasise the way in which art can imitate reality. Thus Apollo’s handiwork has, paradoxically, transformed Marsyas’ pain and gruesome mutilation into something that is to be admired, even into a thing of beauty, for verbs like micare and perlucere are as often, if not more often, used in Roman poetry of objects such as jewels and stars as they are of the interior of the body.33 Tellingly, they are also terms that have much more association with Apollo in his manifestation as the Sun than the rough and hirsute satyr Marsyas.34 It might be argued, therefore, that what Apollo is doing in this episode is stripping off the satyr’s rough hide and carving him into an image that more

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Webb (2009), 83. See also Elsner (2002), 2, “there is little doubt that Graeco-Roman writers and readers would have recognised the description of art as a paradigmatic example of ekphrasis”. Rawson (1987), 41, states that Marsyas’ punishment was, “a favourite theme with Roman art patrons, especially in the form of copies of the Pergamene sculpture of Marsyas hanging.” Sometimes the stone from which the Roman copies were made was red-veined which, according to Rawson, was, “to emphasise the brutality and pathos of the situation.” (1987, 53–54). See, for instance, the recently discovered statue of Marsyas from the Villa delle Vignacce (now being displayed in the Capitoline Museum at Rome) where the bloodied skin is rendered by head, arms and torso of a veiny red marble. On the forum statue of Marsyas, see Richardson (1995), 370–371. There were also bronze copies of this set up in the civitates liberae of the Empire according to Serv. A. 3.20, 4.58. While micare can be employed quite frequently of moving or pulsating body parts (TLL 929.29–56), it is just as often used of the stars, moon, and sun (TLL 930.41–72) and of gems or metals (TLL 930.73–931.23). The verb perlucere is not commonly used of body parts but is quite often employed of the gleam of gems or glass (TLL 1518.43–51). Ovid uses very similar terms in his description of the palace of Phoebus in Book 2 of the Met.; he uses the cognate verb lucere once (v. 24) and the verb micare twice (vv. 2, 40) of Phoebus’ palace, throne and diadem, in addition to other words that evoke light and gleaming: nitidum, 3; radiabant, 4. See also Accius fr. 581–584 (Ribbeck3) in which micare is used to describe the flames of the Sun’s chariot and Apuleius Flor. 3.8–11 where Marsyas mocks Apollo by praising his own rough hair, dirty beard and hairy chest in contrast to Apollo’s gleaming limbs, dazzling clothing and glittering lyre. See also Feldherr & James (2004), 82.

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resembles god than satyr. Andrew Feldherr and Paula James point out that many of the terms Ovid uses to describe Marsyas’ interior also evoke the components of a lyre, an instrument that was emblematic of Apollo.35 But whether Apollo is carving Marsyas into a lyre or a statue, Ovid underlines the transformation that is being wrought upon the satyr’s body with his choice and placement of words: in v. 390 Ovid stresses the animalistic quality of Marsyas’ skin by the term pelle,36 and juxtaposes this with micant at the beginning of the line, highlighting the disjuncture between roughness and luminescence and emphasising the abruptness of the change from one to the other. If Apollo is effecting an artistic transformation on Marsyas, this is likely to arouse very different emotions from the mutilation of a body. The ancients were well aware of the disjuncture of emotions between the reality of suffering and an artistic representation of it, the former causing distress and the latter provoking admiration.37 The torture of Marsyas has transformed him into an object, which, as Scarry has argued, is one of the effects of torture, but this is an object that may stimulate admiration in the viewer as much as disgust. It does appear, therefore, that Ovid may be trying to provoke a very complex and even contradictory emotional response in his audience. While we may never know exactly how his Roman audience responded to this episode, we can see that certain devices, such as the use of the internal narrator and the ekphrastic aside, help to distance the reader from the violence, while others, like Marsyas’ anguished cries which bring the reader into his experience, break through the barriers that have been established between torture victim and observers. In a work that is all about transformations, this is the first of the metamorphoses that is effected on Marsyas. The second metamorphosis in the episode is brought about by the country-dwellers, the ruricolae (392), who almost literally ‘cry a river’ for Marsyas, for their tears fall upon the fertile earth which feeds them back as the river which bears his name.38 Marsyas’ physical pain

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Feldherr & James (2004), 82–83. According to the Oxford Latin Dictionary (ad loc. defs 1 and 1b), pellis is usually employed of the natural covering of animals and, when applied to the human skin, it often implies “an unkempt or uncultivated condition.” King (2018), 24, quoting Plut. Quaest. Conviv. 674b. See also Arist. Poet. 1448b10–11. But see also Morales (1996) who discusses the ways in which this dichotomy could be confounded. Noteworthy is the way in which the language which Ovid uses to describe the fertilis terra in vv. 396–397 echoes certain words that he employed of Marsyas’ flayed body: venis in v. 397 picks up venae from 390, while immaduit and madefacta in 396 recall how the satyr’s blood flowed everywhere (undique manat) in 388. This implies that the earth is in sympathy with Marsyas. But it is important to note that Ovid gives no indication as to whether these inhabitants of the countryside have witnessed the mutilation of the satyr’s body or

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and mental anguish is thus transmuted into the emotional pain of his fellow countryfolk; it is this second transformation that provides the satyr with an identity beyond his death, one which still preserves his name and the melody of his voice, as the adjective liquidissimus which is used of the river in v. 400 implies.39 Scholars have observed that the genesis of the Marsyas river from onlookers’ tears is a departure from the more usual versions of the myth in which Marsyas’ flayed skin or his blood give rise directly to the river.40 Ovid’s alteration to the myth has thus made the presence of Marsyas’ faithful companions crucial to the episode, for not only do they contribute a note of sympathy that has hitherto been absent but they offer the reader another, more positive, way to interpret the violence of Marsyas’ demise.

2

Prudentius’ Vincent: Traumatic Pain and Transcendence

While the Marsyas episode is among the most graphically violent episodes in the Metamorphoses,41 a significant proportion of the poems of the Peristephanon are laced with detailed descriptions of torture and mutilation, one of the aspects of this collection of poems to which scholars from a previous era reacted with distaste, or even censure.42 And Perist. 5 is certainly no exception to this: there are at least three episodes of torture/mutilation within this poem, which become lengthier and more elaborate the more the governor’s authority and prestige is threatened by the martyr.43 Prudentius, in fact, structures his

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they are simply reacting to the news of his death; the break between the word fibras at the end of v. 391 and illum at the start of the next verse is the most abrupt in the episode. This creates an even greater sense of separation between the dissolution of Marsyas’ body and his transformation. See also Saunders (2006), 35, on the disjunction here. Newlands (2018), 168, points out that this adjective is not applied to rivers per se and the superlative is unusual; she cites the OLD (ad loc. def. 6) on the fact that liquidus can be used of sound that is clear-toned or melodious. Feldherr & James (2004), 98; Saunders, (2006), 35; Newlands (2018), 168. In Claudian’s version (in Eutr. 2.255–271) it is Marsyas’ skin hung up in a cave from which the river springs while in Hyginus it flows from his blood (Fab. 165): It could well be that by his use of the phrase cruor undique manat in v. 388 Ovid is tricking his audience into anticipating the direct genesis of the river from Marsyas’ blood, making his ‘twist’ at the end doubly surprising. Theodorakopoulos (1999), 156, labels it as, “one of the most notoriously brutal passages in the poem.” For a summary of such views, see Henderson (1983), 84. In vv. 109–144 Vincent is tortured by the claws; in vv. 217–264 he is tortured on the gridiron and then imprisoned, placed in stocks and made to lie on broken pottery sherds; in vv.

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account of the martyrdom of Vincent of Saragossa in Perist. 5 largely as a series of contests between the martyr and the governor Datianus, firstly over Vincent’s refusal to sacrifice to the pagan deities (vv. 17–174), then over the location of the sacred books (175–376) and finally over the martyr’s body itself which refuses to be destroyed (377–524). All these contests are centred on various forms of eloquence, all of them involve abuse of the martyr’s body, and in all of them, of course, Vincent (as the etymology of his name vincens suggests) ultimately wins. While Vincent triumphs over authority, in contrast to Marsyas who palpably loses his challenge, there are certain interesting similarities between the two figures. If we turn to Vincent’s torture by the ungula in Perist. 5 (the first episode of torture in the poem, occurring immediately after Vincent has refused to worship the pagan deities), we can see that Datianus identifies Vincent as a hubristic figure: he labels him inprobus (96), conviciator (102), contumax (105) and characterises him as one who mocks the gods (104). It is as though Vincent is being cast in the role of a rebellious Marsyas, one who challenges the authority of the gods who uphold the state.44 As we have seen, in Roman culture the figure of Marsyas was an ambiguous one and he quite often seems to have been used by the state to signify its authority and the just punishment of hubris. And it is as just punishment of hubris that the governor Datianus represents his torture of Vincent: “Posthinc hiulcis ictibus nudate costarum abdita ut per lacunas vulnerum iecur retectum palpitet.” “Then with cleaving strokes Lay bare his ribs of their coverings So, through the gaps of his wounds His liver uncovered will throb.” (113–116)

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393–504 Datianus attempts to destroy and mutilate his body, first by exposing it to wild beasts and then by sending it out to sea so that it can be pounded by waves and rocks. See Fux (2003), 235, who makes a similar point about the crescendo of torture scenes in this poem and Desantis (2000), 453, who observes that, “Vincent is the only martyr in Prudentius’ treatments to suffer the full sequence of canonical tortures”. Tu porro solus obteras/ Romam, senatum, Caesarem? 107–108. Fux (2003), ad loc., observes that this is the only allusion to Rome in the poem.

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Datianus describes the effects of the claw in terms that suggest that what he wants it to achieve is to strip away all Vincent’s insolence with his skin.45 Verse 114 where Datianus orders the torturers to strip the coverings from Vincent’s ribs is particularly significant. On a literal level this line refers to the extirpation of skin but the words nudate and abdita also create a metaphorical picture of cloth or coverings being stripped away from Vincent’s form so that he is entirely naked. The sense of shame that Datianus wishes to induce in the martyr on the loss of his skin is also apparent at Perist. 10.761–763 where a torturer peels the skin back from a victim’s skull explicitly to dishonour him: comam cutemque uerticis reuulserat/ a fronte tortor, nuda testa ut tegmine/ ceruicem adusque dehonestaret caput. So, according to Datianus, the claw will bring Vincent to humility by removing and mutilating his skin, the organ that constitutes the “boundary between self and the world”.46 In his grisly description of what the claw will do to Vincent’s body, we can draw a comparison between Datianus’ role in this episode and that of the anonymous narrator in Ovid’s tale of Marsyas. Both narrators seem to take a grim satisfaction in specifying the details of the torture in ways that convey to the reader the bodily pain and mental anguish that is being or will be visited on the victim. There are also some interesting verbal similarities between these two narrators’ accounts. Neither employs a term for pain when they describe the effects of the torture, for their graphic accounts of the mutilations inflicted on the martyrs’ bodies suffice to convey the pain.47 Datianus makes use of the term retectum in v. 116 to indicate how Vincent’s liver will be uncovered (iecur 45 46

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On the stripping of the skin as a “remedy” for hubris see Rosati (2013), 309, on Marsyas’ flaying. “… skin—the boundary between the self and the world or, as Bichat put it, the ‘sensitive limit of our soul’” Rey (1995), 5. Datianus’ preoccupation with Vincent’s skin is also apparent in vv. 141–142 where he refers to the wounds and scars that the claw has produced on his skin and vv. 177–178 where he complains that Vincent’s stubbornness has hardened the thick skin of his chest (si tanta callum pectoris/ praedurat obstinatio). It is interesting that callum is more usually employed of the hides of animals (OLD defs 1a and 2) and would also be an appropriate term for a satyr like Marsyas. But Vincent’s ‘hide’ proves more resistant to torture than Marsyas’ pellis. The most common Latin term for pain dolor does occur six times in Perist. 5: at vv. 136, 160, 234, 262, 328, 424. Once it refers to the fact that the skill of the torturers in inflicting pain is being overcome (136); twice it is used of Vincent’s ability to resist pain (160, 234; both discussed below), once the term is used of the instruments of torture (262) and twice it alludes to the persecutor’s emotional distress at not being able to break Vincent (328, 424). The fact remains, nonetheless, that in the episodes of torture that Vincent endures during his martyrdom (at 109–144, 217–232, 249–262), it is largely Prudentius’ graphic descriptions of the effects of the torture that convey the potential for suffering rather than terms for pain.

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retectum palpitet) and the internal narrator of the Metamorphoses employs the cognate verb detecti in v. 389 (detecti patent nervi) in reference to the exposure of Marsyas’ nervi. By using such terms, the narrators signify the eradication of the barrier between inner and outer and, with the dissolution of “the boundary between self and the world”, the victims’ internal organs are represented as assuming a life and personality of their own. In the Peristephanon this is implied by the verb palpitet that Datianus uses in v. 116 to convey the throbbing of Vincent’s exposed liver; in the Metamorphoses a comparable term, trepidae, is used by the narrator at v. 389 to depict the way in which Marsyas’ veins quiver at the light. Significantly, both these terms can connote fear as well as movement and thus they indicate the emotional distress that the torturers have induced or wish to induce in their victims. Datianus and Ovid’s internal narrator seem to share a similar attitude about the effects of torture on the victim; because to them self and body are as one, the extirpation of the skin reveals the true person whose emotions cannot be concealed and who will be obliterated when their body is destroyed. Thus, by setting Datianus’ description of what he wants his torture of Vincent to achieve against Ovid’s account of Marsyas’ mutilation, we can discern the expectations that Prudentius’ audience might have, not only about the pain that such torture was designed to produce, but its potential to obliterate the self when the body is violated and fragmented. Martyrs, however, usually, confound or reverse expectations and Vincent does not respond, as Marsyas does, with fear or anguish but with laughter: Ridebat haec miles dei manus cruentas increpans quod fixa non profundius intraret artus ungula. But the soldier of God laughed at these things Chiding the bloody hands Because the claw which had been thrust in Didn’t enter his body more deeply. (117–120) Laughter or joking is not an uncommon reaction of martyrs to torture (cf. Perist. 2.409), for laughter can also be a reaction to extreme situations, including negative ones. It is interesting in this regard that in his novel Watt Samuel Beckett describes three types of laughter that, “strictly speaking are not laughs but modes of ululation.” The third type, the “mirthless laugh is the dianoetic

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laugh … it is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus … the laugh that laughs … at that which is unhappy.”48 Commenting on Beckett’s description, Martin Esslin observes, The key term in Beckett’s description of the ultimate laugh, the risus purus, is I think, the word dianoetic. The dianoia in Aristotle’s poetics is the decisive insight, the cathartic discovery of the truth by a central character in Greek tragedy; it is the basis of that purgation of the emotions that transform the spectacle of suffering and misfortune from a distressing, negative experience into something positive and sublime.49 Thus, the first word of the stanza above, ridebat, is Prudentius’ signal to the reader that the anticipated bodily anguish and mental suffering will be transformed into a positive, uplifting experience. Significantly it is also in this stanza that Prudentius resumes his authorial voice; however, he makes no statement about blood flowing everywhere, nor does he depict Vincent as one big wound, as Ovid’s narrator did with Marsyas.50 Instead, Prudentius offers the reader a different way of interpreting Vincent’s torture, underlying which is the notion that there is another Vincent who can never be affected by pain.51 This concept of an inner self that pain cannot reach appears in quite a few poems of the Peristephanon as an explanation of martyrs’ resistance to torture.52 In vv. 118– 48 49 50

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Beckett (1958), 53. Esslin (1993), 18. Significantly the allusions to blood in this scene are indirect. Prudentius places them into the mouths of martyr (118, 152) and persecutor (143) where they feature in the contest of wills between the two. Later in Perist. 5, Vincent himself will declare that this is why torture cannot harm him: Est alter, est intrinsecus/ uiolare quem nullus potest,/ liber quietus integer,/ exsors dolorum tristium, 157–160. Versions of this idea appear also in Perist. 2.218–220, 3.91–95, 10.346–350, 518–520 and in other martyr texts; see Cobb (2017), 68–72. I agree with the view that this notion seems largely to stem from Stoic philosophy, particularly from Epictetus. According to Perkins (1995, 89), Epictetus, “constructed a ‘self’ for whom pain, grief and hardship had no effect”, but Perkins views Christian martyr literature in its focus on “the suffering self” as opposed to the notions of philosophers such as Epictetus and the Stoics rather than developing from them (173). Scholars such as Kozlowski (2011), 16–18, Moss (2013), 290–292, and Cobb (2017), 133, in contrast, convincingly argue that martyr texts are closely aligned with pagan philosophical notions about the noble death and Stoic ideas about resisting pain. On the other hand, this notion of an inner self which is not only immune from pain but also in communion with God may also, in part, be in tune with notions developed by Augustine whose, “earlier works reveal an individualist view of self-conceived of as inner space, a self whose communion with God is figured primarily as an ascent”, according to Mastrangelo (2008), 165. On this see also Cary (2000), 246–247.

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120, Prudentius depicts Vincent taunting the torturers to thrust the claw more deeply into his body. But no matter how deeply the claw is thrust, it can never go deep enough and Prudentius’ choice of the comparative adverb profundius in verse 119 is telling. The term can also be employed metaphorically of things that are secret or mysterious,53 and may also be meant to suggest that Vincent has access to some secret knowledge which makes his soul immune to trauma. The adjective profundus is also often used to denote a depth that is limitless, making the comparative almost a contradiction.54 Applied as it is to torturers who may have been referred to as Plutones in v. 99,55 it helps to create a picture of men who will descend even to the depths of Tartarus to inflict pain on their victim. The implication of this term may therefore be that Vincent’s body is passing through hell, a katabasis from which he will emerge transformed. The fact that it is Vincent’s body rather than his soul that is being racked by pain does not necessarily imply that pain does not play an important role in his martyrdom. Stephanie Cobb has argued that Vincent in Perist. 5 is depicted as immune from pain, because God has taken the pain away and that pain is thus not a “locus of meaning” for his martyrdom. This is what Augustine suggests in his sermons on Vincent, according to Cobb,56 and it is certainly the case that Augustine places a great deal of stress on God’s active role in Vincent’s resistance to torture (Serm. 274, 275, 276). But Prudentius does not stress this aspect so much in his portrayal of Vincent and is more inclined to place emphasis on Vincent’s own strength and courage: he equates Vincent with both an athlete (4.101–104) and a soldier (5.293–296), two professions which prided themselves on their ability to endure pain and hardship. Prudentius, moreover, never explicitly states that God has removed Vincent’s pain; Vincent’s brave declaration that pain cannot harm his inner self is uttered after this first bout of torture and could also be interpreted as a coping mechanism that enables him to transcend the mutilation of his body in a way that Marsyas could never achieve.57 After

53 54 55

56 57

OLD def. 5. This sense of profundus seems to be more developed in Christian literature; see Blaise & Chirat (1954, ad loc.). OLD defs 2b, 3 and 4. Cf. also Job 11.8: [Deus] excelsior caelo est et quid facies profundior inferno et unde cognosces. illos reorum Plutones/ pastos resectis carnibus, 99–100. This reading is in the oldest group of mss but Cunningham adopts the reading found in the majority of mss: reorum carnibus/ pastos manuque exercitos. On the other hand, Fux (2003), ad loc., argues for the allusion to the torturers as Plutones, largely on the grounds of parallels with Perist. 2.356 and 404 and the association of Pluto with blood in Contra Symmachum 1.396–399. Cobb (2017), 75. Cobb does not discuss Vincent’s first torture episode with the claws (109–128), only his second on the grid; she is also inclined to gloss over or dismiss other episodes of torture

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Vincent’s second bout of torture on the gridiron (217–232), Prudentius states that the martyr remains unmoved, “as though ignorant of pain”: … inmotus manet/tamquam dolorum nescius, 233–234. Cobb argues that this means that Vincent’s soul (and thus he himself) is now immune from pain,58 but the operative word tamquam may simply imply that Vincent is just behaving as though he no longer feels pain.59 In this way, Vincent’s conquest of the pain inflicted on his body becomes part of his triumph over the Roman state, while the traumatic pain through which his body has passed becomes akin to an initiation rite, a force that helps to transport him to a different state of existence.60 Vincent’s elevation to a higher plane is made clear in the stanza beginning at v. 125 in which Prudentius with the introductory words ast ille establishes a clear opposition between martyr and the torturers; he then uses terms that evoke the sky (nubilus, serenus) in vv. 126–127 in application to Vincent’s countenance. Michael Roberts suggests that these terms indicate the closing of the gap between heaven and earth.61 Ast ille tanto laetior omni vacantem nubilo fronte serenam luminat te, Christe, praesentem videns. But that man was so much the happier Free of any cloud His clear countenance was illuminated Seeing you there, Christ. (125–128)

58 59

60 61

within the Peristephanon where pain is an important element. Moss (2013), 287–288, criticises Cobb’s arguments on the grounds that they are unnuanced and have a tendency to treat all the episodes of resistance to pain in the same way; she further observes, “To say, for instance, as Cobb does, that Stoics or Christian martyrs feel no pain at all seems to obscure the complex philosophical discussions of the very mechanics by which good Stoics are able to endure pain.” Cobb (2017), 69. This, unfortunately, is the only occurrence of the term tamquam in the Peristephanon but Prudentius’ use of the word at Psychomachia 555 may be instructive. Here he employs it of Avaritia who puts on a false appearance of thriftiness and behaves “as though she never snatched anything” (tamquam nil raptet avare); thus, she is behaving in a way that belies her true feelings. It could be argued that Prudentius is employing tamquam in a similar way at Perist. 5.234 to imply that Vincent is feeling pain but is untroubled by it. See McMeekin (this volume, 240, n. 63) on this attitude as a late Stoic position. See Glucklich (2001), 25, in the transformative effects of religiously induced pain. Roberts (1993), 63.

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From a modern perspective, it could be argued that the trauma inflicted on his body has brought Vincent to an altered state of consciousness and has induced euphoria (tanto laetior, 125) rather than anguish. And, according to Ariel Glucklich, there may be a physiological basis for a euphoric reaction to extreme pain, when she observes, Anesthesiologists and neurologists know that certain levels of pain possess analgesic qualities and can even induce euphoric states. … a sharp and brief pain can produce an effect called ‘hyperstimulation analgesia’, which is based on the production of endogenous opioids resulting in temporary states of euphoria that may also be related to the reduction of psychological drives and the experience of dissociation or trance.62 While this is more usually pain that is deliberately self-inflicted,63 according to Maureen Tilley, many martyrs received training in ascetic techniques before undergoing torture. She argues that martyrs could escape pain through the practise of “hysterical fugue”, an altered state of consciousness in which the links between objects and their normal emotions were severed.64 This form of pain resistance may also correspond with what David Morris terms “visionary pain”; he observes that this type of pain experience serves as a bridge between two worlds, allowing the victim access to a state of being which is denied to others whose vision is restricted to the material world.65 It is in the otherworldly realm induced by extreme pain that Christ can be invoked, and his presence has transformed Vincent’s features so that they are illuminated. The verb luminat in v. 127 brings Vincent closer to the divine, just as the verbs micare and perlucere in the Metamorphoses merged Marsyas’ identity with that of Apollo. But unlike Marsyas, Vincent is the viewer here rather than an object to be gazed upon, and his gaze directs the reader outwards and upwards rather than inwards towards his body. When Ovid’s anonymous narrator introduced the aside “you would be able to count” (possis numerare, 390–391) in the Metamorphoses, he linked the reader with himself as a detached observer of Marsyas’ pain. In contrast Prudentius in Perist. 5, by making videns the final word in v. 128 (and, indeed, the final word of this stanza), is emphasising Vincent’s active participation in the process of the reinterpretation of his torture and, perhaps, playing upon the etymology of Vincent’s name 62 63 64 65

Glucklich (2001), 30. Bushell (1995), 560. Tilley (1991), 471–473. Morris (2007), 125.

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(videns/vincens). It is thus not Christ who illuminates Vincent’s features but Vincent’s vision of Christ which effects the illumination and conquers the pain. And the reader is invited to become a participant in this vision and a fellow victor as, along with Vincent, she/he beholds Christ’s presence in the pain.

3

Conclusion

The traumatic pain of Marsyas’ torture results in two very different metamorphoses. There is one in which his identity is entirely obliterated; he becomes fused with Apollo as his instrument or a lesser image of the god, a transformation which may engender admiration but in which his body has become something other than what the satyr represented. When Marsyas’ skin is ripped from his body he is torn from himself and the violence of this rupture is never really resolved, nor, in his polyphonic account, does Ovid ever attempt to reconcile the contradictory responses that the satyr’s mutilation arouses. The second metamorphosis, the one that stems from the reaction of his fellow country folk, does confer an identity on Marsyas that goes beyond his body and retains his name and gift for music but even this identity is tenuous. Ovid may describe the river that bears Marsyas’ name as liquidissimus but he also depicts it flowing to join the amorphous sea and although it still has a voice, it is a voice that can never compete with Apollo or challenge the authority of the gods again. In Perist. 5, as well, Prudentius will later introduce Vincent’s peers, his fellow Christians, who cry over his mutilated body and treat it in ways that ensure the message of his martyrdom will survive his death (333–344). But even before this occurs in the poem, the traumatic pain that has been inflicted on Vincent’s body has enabled him to achieve another level of identity. Both Prudentius and Ovid place their descriptions of trauma to the body in the mouths of internal narrators, descriptions that are intended to convey the physical and mental suffering that such trauma imparts. It is a trauma so extreme that it tears both Marsyas and Vincent from themselves, but for Vincent this means that his real self is freed from the limitations of his body and is no longer blinded by his eyes (cf. Romanus at Perist. 10.436–440). By evoking the concept of the inner self, Prudentius enables the reader, also, to see past the trauma of the mutilation and reconnect with Vincent on a higher plane where, along with Vincent, she/he can see things that are invisible and unfathomable to those who do not have faith. As the one doing the viewing, Vincent retains his identity throughout this process; his martyrdom may be an imitation of Christ’s, but he remains Vincent throughout. And unlike Apollo, who was responsible for Marsyas’ flaying, but in

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Ovid’s version vanishes from sight once the torture commences, Christ’s presence is manifested at the height of Vincent’s pain and becomes so concrete that in v. 128 he can be addressed as te, “you”.66

References Editions and Translations Ovid. (2004) Metamorphoses. R.J. Tarrant (ed.), P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prudentius. (1966) Aurelii Prudentius Clementis Carmina. M.P. Cunningham (ed.). Turnhout: Brepols. Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta: Tertiis Curis. O. Ribbeck (ed.). Leipzig.

Modern Scholarship Beckett, S. (1958) Watt. Paris: The Olympia Press. Blaise, A. & Chirat, H. (1954) Dictionnaire Latin-Français des auteurs chrétiens. Turnhout: Editions Brepols. Bushell, W.C. (1995) ‘Psychophysiological and Comparative Analysis of Asceticism,’ in V.L. Wimbush & R. Valantasis (eds), Asceticism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 553–575. Cary, P. (2000) Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Clarke, J.R. (2021) ‘Female Pain in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, Classical Quarterly 71: 386–401. Cobb, L.S. (2017) Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts. Oakland: University of California Press. Coleman, K. (1990) ‘Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments’, The Journal of Roman Studies 80: 44–73. Desantis, C. (2000) ‘Prudentius’ St. Vincent: a Study of Peristephanon 5’, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 10: 443–463. Dykes, A. (2011) Reading Sin in the World: The Hamartigenia of Prudentius and the Vocation of the Responsible Reader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elsner, J. (2002) ‘Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis’, Ramus 31: 1–18. Esslin, M. (1993) ‘What Beckett Teaches Me: His Minimalist Approach to Ethics’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 2: 13–20.

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te, Christe, praesentem videns. According to Fux (2003), ad loc., this is the “seule adresse du poète au Christ dans l’ensemble du Peristephanon.”

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Fagan, G. (2010) ‘Torture, Roman’, in M. Gagarin (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fantham, E. (2005) ‘Liberty and the People in Republican Rome’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 135: 209–229. Feldherr, A. & James, P. (2004) ‘Making the Most of Marsyas’, Arethusa 37: 77–103. Frankfurter, D. (2009) ‘Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 17: 215–245. Fux, P. -Y. (2003) Les Sept Passions de Prudence (Peristephanon 2.5.9.11–14). Fribourg: Aschendorff. Galinsky, K. (1975) Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects. Oxford: Blackwell. Gleason, M.W. (2009) ‘Shock and Awe: The Performance Dimension of Galen’s Anatomy Demonstrations’, in C. Gill & T. Whitmarsh & J. Wilkins (eds), Galen and the World of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 85–114. Glucklich, A. (2001) Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. New York: Oxford University Press. Grig, L. (2004) Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity. London: Duckworth. Hárdi, L. & Kroó, A. (2011) ‘The Trauma of Torture and the Rehabilitation of Torture Survivors’, Zeitschrift für Psychologie 219: 133–142. Henderson, W.J. (1983) ‘Violence in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, Akroterion 28: 84–92. King, D. (2018) Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kozlowski, J.M. (2011) ‘Polycarp as a Christian Gymnosophist’, Studia Patristica 51: 15– 22. Malamud, M. (1989) A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press. Mastrangelo, M. (2008) The Roman Self in Late Antiquity: Prudentius and the Poetics of the Soul. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Morales, H. (1996) ‘The Torturer’s Apprentice’, in J. Elsner (ed.), Art and Text in Roman Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 182–209. Morris, D.B. (2007) The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California Press. [repr. of 1991] Moss, C. (2013) ‘Miraculous Events in Early Christian Stories about Martyrs’, in T. Nicklas & J. Spittler (eds), Credible, Incredible: The Miraculous in the Ancient Mediterranean. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 283–301. Newlands, C.E. (2018) ‘Violence and Resistance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, in M.R. Gale & J.H.D. Scourfield (eds), Texts and Violence in the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 139–178. Niżyńska, J. (2001) ‘Marsyas’s Howl: The Myth of Marsyas in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Zbigniew Herbert’s “Apollo and Marsyas”’, Comparative Literature 53: 151–169.

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Palmer, A. -M. (1989) Prudentius on the Martyrs. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Pelttari, A. (2014) The Space That Remains: Reading Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Perkins, J. (1995) The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge. Rawson, P.B. (1987) The Myth of Marsyas in the Roman Visual Arts: An Iconographic Study. Oxford: B.A.R. International Series 347. Rey, R. (1995) The History of Pain. L.E. Wallace & J.A. Cadden & S.W. Cadden (transl.). Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Richardson, L. (1995) A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins. Roberts, M. (1993) Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Rosati, G. (2013) Ovidio Metamorfosi Volume iii (Libri v–vi)2. 2nd Ed. Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. Ross, J. (1995) ‘Dynamic Writing and Martyrs’ Bodies in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3: 325–355. Saunders, T. (2006) ‘Discipline and Receive; or, Making an Example out of Marsyas’, in C. Martindale & R.F. Thomas (eds), Classics and the Uses of Reception. Malden: Blackwell, pp. 32–43. Scarry, E. (1985) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scarry, E. (2007) ‘Among Schoolchildren: The Use of Body Damage to Express Physical Pain’, in S. Coakley & K. Shelemay (eds), Pain and its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture. Cambridge MA, London: Harvard University Press, pp. 279– 316. Segal, C. (1998) ‘Ovid’s Metamorphic Bodies: Art, Gender, and Violence in the Metamorphoses’, Arion 5: 9–41. Small, J.P. (1982) Cacus and Marsyas in Etrusco-Roman Legend. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Theodorakopoulos, E. (1999) ‘Closure and Transformation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, in A. Barchiesi & P.R. Hardie & S. Hinds (eds), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and its Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society. Tilley, M. (1991) ‘The Ascetic Body and the (Un) making of the World of the Martyr’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59: 467–479. Valent, P. (2012) ‘Trauma, Definitions of’, in C.R. Figley (ed.), Encyclopedia of Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Guide. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, pp. 677–679. Vanderspoel, J. (1986) ‘Claudian, Christ and the Cult of the Saints’, Classical Quarterly 36: 244–245.

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Webb, R. (2009) Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate. Wilkinson, L.P. (1955) Ovid Recalled. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

chapter 10

Ignatius of Antioch’s Anticipation of Torture: An Alternative Reading of Romans 4–5 Fiona McMeekin

1

Introduction

Ignatius of Antioch has with good reason been described as an “enigma”:1 very little is known for certain about him. There is no firm evidence for the time or place of his birth, the socio-economic status of his family, his activities prior to the letters apparently written en route from Syria to Rome, or even the specific charges underlying his claim to have been condemned “for the name” of Christian.2 Nor are the eventual circumstances of his death known.3 Polycarp of Smyrna provides the only extant contemporary witness to Ignatius (Philippians 13.1–2), and he does not furnish biographical information. Ignatius describes himself as “bishop of Syria” (Romans 2.2), travelling from Antioch to Rome to face death by exposure to wild animals (Rom. 5.1–2; Ephesians 1.2). His death is dated to the reign of Trajan by Eusebius, but cases have been made for a date under Hadrian or later.4 For the purposes of this discussion, it will be assumed that any date between Trajan’s reign and the death of Polycarp (c. 155/6–176ce) is plausible.5 Seven of the extant letters attributed to Ignatius form the so-called middle recension, comprising six letters to Christian congregations and one to Polycarp.6 These hold the strongest claims to authenticity,7 and it is the middle recension which is under consideration in this chapter.

1 Trevett (1992), 1; Brent (2006a), 429; (2006b), 18. 2 Ignatius refers to himself as “condemned” (κατάκριτος) at Eph. 12.1 and states he is “bound” (δεδεμένος, δέδεμεναι) for the sake of the name (Eph. 1.2, 3.1) and for Christ (Rom. 1.1). He associates his imprisonment with adherence to Christ, but nowhere does he state the actual charges. There is no proof that he was arrested for being a Christian, let alone as the result of any supposed persecution. 3 The Ignatian martyria are likely to be inventions of the fifth century. 4 See Holmes (2007), 170. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 3.36.1–2, where “around this time” refers back to the reign of Trajan. See Lightfoot (1889b), 449–450 on the dating of Ignatius’ death to the tenth year of the reign in Eusebius’ Chronicon (partially preserved in Jerome’s translation). 5 Cf. Brent (2006b), 317. The Martyrdom of Polycarp may be third century. See Moss (2010b). 6 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 3.36.3–11 lists seven letters written by Ignatius on his journey from Syria to

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The concerns expressed in these letters are predominantly pastoral and didactic, but that to the Roman congregation differs somewhat in tone, with an emphasis on Ignatius’ approaching martyrdom. Polycarp praises Ignatius’ letters as beneficial because of the πίστις (“mutual faith, trust, or loyalty”), ὑπομονή (“patient endurance”) and οἰκοδομή (“edification”) to be found within them (Philip. 13.2). Irenaeus describes Ignatius as “one of ours” and quotes Rom. 4.1 in support of the analogy of the wheat and the chaff (Against Heresies 5.28.4). This phrase and the act of quotation suggests approval, even if Irenaeus’ failure to name Ignatius may imply some ambivalence.8 Eusebius quotes this section from Irenaeus and the Ignatian passage verbatim (Ecclesiastical History 3.36.12), Polycarp’s Philip. 13.1–2 (in praise of Ignatius’ letters) (3.36.12), and Ignatius Rom. 5.1–3 (3.36.7–9). John Chrysostom devotes an entire sermon to Ignatius (Homily on Saint Ignatius), who is held up as a moral exemplar. It is unlikely that anyone would have invented or so heavily interpolated the contents of the long recension of Ignatius’ letters, perhaps in an attempt to support their own theological viewpoints,9 had Ignatius not held some appeal and credibility. Even if the seven letters of the middle recension were forgeries, the number and linguistic variety of manuscripts, which survive variously in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian and Coptic, would still suggest their widespread appeal.10 The fifth century martyria testify to enduring interest in and approbation of Ignatius as a moral exemplar. The extant ancient Christian verdict on Ignatius leans to the positive. However, the opinion of modern Anglophone scholarship has frequently been rather different. Accusations of an unsound mind and an unhealthy predilection for pain abound. This censure goes back at least to the eighteenth century, when Gibbon describes Ignatius’ letters as containing “sentiments the most repugnant to the ordinary feelings of human nature”.11 It is in the twentieth century, though, that a wave of psychoanalysis crashes over Igna-

7 8

9 10 11

Rome: to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia and Smyrna, and also to Polycarp. These concur with the letters of the middle recension. See Holmes (2007), 171–173; Brent (2007), 95–143; Vinzent (2019), 266–464 raises serious doubts as to the integrity of the middle recension; Lookadoo (2020). Cf. Brent (2006b), 18, who also questions whether Origen named Ignatius. The reference to Ignatius in his sixth homily on Luke, for instance, survives only in Latin and may be an interpolation. Even if it is, the fact that someone went to the trouble of inserting it suggests a favourable opinion of Ignatius. See Gilliam (2017) on the possible appropriation of Ignatius during the Arrian controversy. Cf. Lightfoot (1889a), 48–49. Gibbon (1994), 546.

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tian scholarship. Streeter asserts confidently that Ignatius exhibits a “neurotic temper”,12 “a psychic overcompensation for an inferiority complex”,13 and a “mind unstrung”.14 Riddle, after claiming that among early Christian martyrs there existed “psychopathic” attitudes, “certain symptoms of a psychosis”, “morbid desires”, and “a morbid pleasure derived from the pains which were endured”, cites Ignatius as having a “hotly ardent desire” for martyrdom.15 Barnard advises that “Ignatius cannot wholly be explained in terms of modern psychology although his language sometimes betrays an exuberance and wildness which could be interpreted as neurotic”.16 De Ste Croix refers to “what has often been called a pathological yearning for martyrdom” and claims that “the eager way in which he speaks of the tortures confronting him shows an abnormal mentality”.17 Dodds declares that “the pathological nature of the craving for martyrdom seems evident in the wild language of Ignatius”.18 Frend, in his seminal work on early Christian martyrdom, refers to Ignatius’ “state of exaltation bordering on mania”, an opinion quoted approvingly by Foster, decades later.19 Brent more cautiously refers to Ignatius’ “highly strung and, one might even say, disturbed temperament”.20 When the more extreme of these views are considered, it might well be said that Ignatius “has the singular talent of being able to turn historians into psychoanalysts”.21 This chapter avoids any attempt to psychoanalyse the elusive, historical Ignatius; the ‘Ignatius’ referred to henceforth is the figure presented in his letters. These, if authentic, may include “self writing”,22 a reflective practice for development of the self.23 Foucault suggests that correspondence is not just “a training of oneself by means of writing”, but it “also constitutes a certain way of manifesting oneself to oneself and others”.24 Ignatius’ letters are expli-

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Streeter (1929), 145, 169, 171, 181. Streeter (1929), 174. Streeter (1929), 179. Riddle (1931), 60, cf. 61–69. Barnard (1963), 193. De Ste Croix (1963), 23–24. Dodds (1965), 135 n.4. Frend (1965), 197; Foster (2006), 7. Brent (2007), 19. Moss (2010a), 41. Tanner (1985) is an exception, eschewing psychoanalysis of Ignatius for comparison with Stoic attitudes to suicide. Castelli (2004), 70–85. Foucault (1983). His description of ancient self-writing as having an aesthetic goal misrepresents its ethical nature. Foucault (1983), 216.

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citly written for public consumption, as each salutation and valediction shows, and they may present a public persona for his audiences.25

2

Pain in Ignatius’ Letters

Two passages, more than any others, are cited as proof of Ignatius’ supposed predilection for pain. Ἐγὼ γράφω πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις καὶ ἐντέλλομαι πᾶσιν ὅτι ἐγὼ ἑκὼν ὑπὲρ θεοῦ ἀποθνήσκω, ἐάνπερ ὑμεῖς μὴ κωλύσητε. παρακαλῶ ὑμᾶς, μὴ εὔνοια ἄκαιρος γένησθέ μοι. ἄφετέ με θηρίων εἶναι βοράν, δι’ ὧν ἔνεστιν θεοῦ ἐπιτυχεῖν. σῖτός εἰμι θεοῦ, καὶ δι’ ὀδόντων θηρίων ἀλήθομαι, ἵνα καθαρὸς ἄρτος εὑρεθῶ. 2 μᾶλλον κολακεύσατε τὰ θηρία, ἵνα μοι τάφος γένωνται καὶ μηθὲν καταλίπωσιν τῶν τοῦ σώματός μου, ἵνα μὴ κοιμηθεὶς βαρύς τινι γένωμαι. τότε ἔσομαι μαθητὴς ἀληθῶς Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅτε οὐδὲ τὸ σῶμά μου ὁ κόσμος ὄψεται. λιτανεύσατε τὸν κύριον ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ, ἵνα διὰ τῶν ὀργάνων τούτων θεοῦ θυσία εὑρεθῶ. I am writing to all the churches and am insisting to everyone that I die for God of my own free will—unless you hinder me. I implore you: do not be unseasonably kind to me. Let me be food for the wild beasts, through whom I can reach God. I am God’s wheat, and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may prove to be pure bread. 2 Better yet, coax the wild beasts, so that they may become my tomb and leave nothing of my body behind, lest I become a burden to anyone once I have fallen asleep. Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world will no longer see my body. Pray to the Lord on my behalf, so that through these instruments I may prove to be a sacrifice to God. (Rom. 4.1– 2)26 ὀναίμην τῶν θηρίων τῶν ἐμοὶ ἡτοιμασμένων, ἅ καὶ εὔχομαι σύντομά μοι εὑρεθῆναι· ἃ καὶ κολακεύσω συντόμως με καταφαγεῖν, οὐχ ὥσπερ τινῶν δειλαινόμενα οὐχ ἥψαντο. κἂν αὐτὰ δὲ ἑκόντα μὴ θέλῃ, ἐγὼ προσβιάσομαι. 3. συγγνώμην μοι ἔχετε· τί μοι συμφέρει ἐγὼ γινώσκω. νῦν ἄρχομαι μαθητὴς εἶναι. μηθέν με

25 26

Cf. van der Blom (2010), 293 and McConnell (2014), 12 on literary self-fashioning in Cicero. Transl. Holmes (2007).

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ζηλώσαι τῶν ὁρατῶν καὶ ἀοράτων, ἵνα Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐπιτύχω. πῦρ καὶ σταυρὸς θηρίων τε συστάσεις, ἀνατομαί, διαιρέσεις, σκορπισμοὶ ὀστέων, συγκοπαὶ μελῶν, ἀλεσμοὶ ὅλου τοῦ σώματος, κακαὶ κολάσεις τοῦ διαβόλου ἐπ’ ἐμὲ ἐρχέσθωσαν, μόνον ἵνα Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐπιτύχω. May I have the pleasure of [or “benefit from”27] the wild beasts that have been prepared for me; and I pray that they prove to be prompt with me. I will even coax them to devour me quickly, not as they have done with some, whom they were too timid to touch. And if when I am willing and ready they are not, I will force them. 3 Bear with me—I know what is best for me. Now at last I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing visible or invisible envy me, so that I may reach Jesus Christ. Fire and cross and battles with wild beasts, mutilation, mangling, wrenching of bones, the hacking of limbs, the crushing of my whole body, cruel tortures of the devil—let these come upon me, only let me reach Jesus Christ! (Rom. 5.2– 3)28 Ignatius does not explicitly mention pain in any of his letters. The absence of vocabulary for physical pain such as ἄλγος and πόνος does not preclude the ability of his letters, especially Rom. 4–5, to provoke an expectation, in at least some of his audience, that his martyrdom would be physically painful. The probable pain of death ad bestias might seem so obvious as to need no mention, even allowing for the fact that concepts and representations of pain can vary between and within cultures.29 Furthermore, there is recognition that certain experiences are likely to cause pain. Seneca the Younger says burning “is harsh” (acerbum est); he is impressed by Mucius Scaevola’s ability to endure it with only military rather than philosophical training against pain (dolor, Letter 24.5). Dolor is expected in the torture of Epicharis (Tacitus, Annals 15.57). Cicero declares, “I do not deny that pain (dolor) is pain, for why else should courage ( fortitudo) be called for?” (Tusculan Disputations 2.33). Pain is overcome by “patient endurance” (patientia, 2.33), a concept whose Greek equivalent (ὑπομονή, ὑπομένω) Ignatius promotes throughout his letters.30

27 28 29 30

Ὀναίμην can suggest enjoyment, but it commonly conveys a sense of benefiting, profiting, or gaining advantage (LSJ, s.v. ὀνίνημι). Transl. Holmes (2007). Cf. Elm (2009), 43–44; see King (2017), esp. 6–21, on the complexities of interpreting ancient representations of pain. Eph. 3.1; Magn. 1.3, 9.1; Trall.1.1; Rom.10.3; Smyrn. 12.2; Poly. 3.1, 3.2, 6.2.

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Ignatius employs forms of πάσχω and πάθος several times in relation to himself31 and to Christ,32 cf. παθητός and ἀπαθής (Eph. 7.2; Polycarp 3.2). L. Stephanie Cobb has demonstrated good reasons for re-evaluating standard translations of πάσχω and patior as “suffer” in Christian texts (I employ “undergo”), and she argues that martyrs are sometimes portrayed as not feeling pain.33 However, the presence or absence of pain is frequently not stated in martyrdoms, and caution is required in drawing conclusions. There are exceptions, for example, Blandina gains “freedom from pain” (ἀναλγησία) (Euseb. Ecclesiastical History 5.1.19). Pamfilus declares that he feels no pain (ego autem nullum sentio dolorem, The Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice 3.6), but in the Greek Recension he does not refer to pain; the emphasis is on patient endurance (ὑπομονή, 36). Even if one accepts that pain is not a “locus of meaning”34 in martyrdoms, which is debatable, it is very clear that ὑπομονή of torture is. In the case of Ignatius, whose dramatic date precedes Cobb’s examples, πάσχω is still likely to imply to his audiences the prospect of undergoing some pain. Ignatius relates πάσχω and πάθος to Christ’s experiences, and emphasises their reality,35 their physicality (for example, being crucified, Trallians 9.1–2) and that he had a corporeal form.36 Πάσχω and πάθος seem to acquire a technical Christian sense in Ignatius, for he is the first extant author to use πάθος in the probable sense of Christ’s “Passion”.37 Jesus’ “torture and execution were designed to cause and to demonstrate publicly extreme and prolonged pain”.38 If Ignatius is to imitate Christ’s πάθος (Rom. 6.3), death will be only part of a lengthy and varied process.39

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

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Trall.4.2; Rom. 4.3, 8.3. Eph. 7.2, 18.2; Magn.5.2; Trall. salutation, 10.1, 11.2; Rom. 6.3; Philadelphians salutation, 3.3, 9.2; Smyrn. 2 (three times); Poly. 3.2. Cobb (2016), esp. 28. Cobb (2016), 29–30. Smyrn. 2; Trall. 10; Magn. 11. Magn. 13.2; Smyrn. 5.2; Eph. 7.2, where this is correlated with him being “initially subject to undergoing” (πρῶτον παθητὸς). Eph. 18.2; Magn. 5.2, 11; Trall. salutation, 11.2; Rom. 6.3; Phil. salutation, 3.3, 9.2; Smyrn. 1.2, 5.3, 7.2, 12.2. Cf. Schoedel (1985), 15; Perkins (1995), 189. On Ignatius’ innovative vocabulary, see Brown, who counts 280 words “peculiar to Ignatius” (1963), 145. On Ignatius’ skilful use of pagan concepts for Christian ends, see Brent (2006b) and Lotz (2007). Elm (2009), 44. Contra Mellink (2000), 132–133, there are no grounds for thinking that πάσχω and πάθος are synonymous only with dying in Ignatius.

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Learning by Undergoing

Closely intertwined with Ignatius’ emphasis on πάθος is his portrayal of himself as an incipient μαθητής (Rom. 4.2, 5.3), a term usually translated “disciple” in Christian contexts, and of Christ as his “teacher” (διδάσκαλος, Magnesians 9.1; Eph. 15.1). Translating μαθητής as learner, pupil, or student returns the focus to its educational origins, viz., a pupil in a school of philosophy, and it configures Ignatius as one expected to employ reason and intellect. His status as an incipient learner is dependent on impending πάθος: his assertion that he is only now beginning to be a μαθητής (Rom. 5.3 cf. 5.1) is embedded in a passage (5.1–3) detailing anticipated tortures (cf. Rom. 4.2). Ignatius can be measured against wider cultural concepts of “learning by undergoing”, or πάθει μάθος.40 Ignatius’ emphases on ὑπομονή and on becoming a μαθητής in the context of πάθος are similar to Stoic themes of learning by adversity.41 For Musonius Rufus, training (ἄσκησις) of both the soul and body can involve habituation to physical hardships and “patient endurance of painful things” (ὑπομονῇ τῶν ἐπιπόνων, Lecture 6 cf. 7). He employs the vocabulary of learning (μάθησις, μανθάνω, μαθήματα, Lec. 6) to emphasise the moral improvement to be gained by ὑπομονή of hardships. This is the language of rational, intellectual discipline, and when Ignatius uses it, it should be evaluated as such.

4

Rationality and Rational Choice Theory

The presentation of Ignatius’ decision to embrace martyrdom can be re-evaluated by applying so-called ‘rational choice theory’ (RCT). As formulated by Rodney Stark, “rational choice” (his italics) “involves weighing the anticipated costs and benefits of actions then seeking to act so as to maximize net benefits”.42 This definition has an elegant simplicity that allows it to be applied to early Christian martyrdom without invoking anachronistic complexities. He emphasises the importance of the “preference axiom”: “people differ greatly

40

41 42

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 176–178; Herodotus, Histories 1.207.1; Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 7–8; cf. undergoing ordeals as moral education (παιδεία, παιδεύω) in the Septuagint, Proverbs 3:11–12; Wisdom of Solomon 3:4–5; Sirach 4:17 cf. Hebrews 12:5–11. See Talbert (1991), 9–21. Muson. Lec. 6; Sen., Prov. 4.3, 4.6; Epict., Diatrib. 3.24.113. Stark (1996), 169. His propositions that “individuals choose their actions rationally” and that this “is fundamental to the whole of social science” cannot be sustained. Behavioural economics has established the contrary. See Kahneman (2003); Thaler and Sunstein (2021).

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in their relative evaluations of specific rewards or benefits” (his italics).43 Our interest remains in the appearance of rational choice in Ignatius’ letters, not the psychology of the historical Ignatius. His letters explicitly evaluate the costs and benefits of his situation (a calculation common to early Christian martyrdoms):44 if he undergoes he will rise up as a freedman of Christ (Rom. 4.3), if he receives the “pure light” he will truly become a person (Rom. 6.2), and “where there is more work, there is much gain” (Poly. 1.3 cf. Seneca, On Providence 3.9). He also calculates that “it is better for me to die into Jesus Christ rather than to rule over the ends of the earth” (6.1). Like Paul (Philip. 1:21), he reconfigures death as life (Rom. 6.2). Ignatius expresses a wish to benefit from the animals (ὀναίμην, Rom. 5.2); he portrays being killed by them as a means to an end, that is, reaching God (4.1) and becoming a sacrifice “through these instruments” (4.2). All the ordeals he specifies are presented as means to reaching God, as the phrase μόνον ἵνα indicates (5.3). Contrary to his reputation, his letters do not fixate on a painful death for its own sake; it is contextualised as enabling a spiritual benefit (for example, reaching God),45 becoming a sacrifice,46 or imitating Christ.47 Eternal life is the prize for God’s athlete (Poly. 2.3) and life is only acquired by dying into Christ’s πάθος (Magn. 5.2). If one allows the premise of Ignatius’ claim that dying for God will result in reaching God, with the further benefits of freedom (Rom. 4.3) and truly becoming a person (6.2), then his acceptance of martyrdom appears to be a rational choice because his perceived benefits outweigh the costs. The simplicity of RCT enables it to be applied beyond Christian martyrdom to heroic and classical precedents. So-called “noble death” is exhibited by a variety of characters who choose death over life for exemplary reasons. Comparisons with early Christian martyrdom narratives have firmly contextualised the latter as having much in common with the earlier non-Christian topos.48 43 44

45 46 47 48

Stark, (1996), 170. Temporary ordeals are weighed against: eternal life: The Martyrdom of Justin and Companions Recension A 5.1–5 cf. Recension B 5.6; The Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice Recension A 7; The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 4.6, cf. Greenberg (2009); other heavenly rewards: The Martyrdom of Marian and James 1.1, 8.7; The Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 4.6, 11.7; The Martyrdom of Justin and Companions Recension A 5.1–2; Recension B 5.2; Recension C 4.1–2; The Martyrdom of Fructuosus 3.2–3, 3.5, 4.1–2; negative consequences: The Martyrdom of Polycarp 11.2; The Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice Recension B 4.4–5; The Martyrdom of Conon 5.7. Rom. 2.1–2, 4.1, 5.3, 9.2; Trall.13.3; Poly. 7.1. Rom. 4.2. Rom. 6.3. See Seeley (1990); Droge and Tabor (1992); van Henten and Avemarie (2002); Greenberg (2009).

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The weighing of costs and benefits is familiar from situations where honour and immortal fame outweigh death. Achilles chooses “undying glory” (κλέος ἄφθιτον, Hom. Il. 9.413) over a long life, explicitly contrasting his options (9.410– 416 cf. Plato, Apology 28C–D). Hector rejects the thought of a base (κακός) death and instead hopes to be heard of by generations to come (Homer, Iliad 22.300– 305). Turnus aims for victory or a distinguished death (leto insigni, Verg. Aen. 10.449–450). Eleazar, also called Avaran, wishes for an “eternal name” (ὄνομα αἰώνιον, 1Maccabees 6:44) when facing death. Valerius Maximus provides many an example of Noble Death; of particular note is that of Cato the Younger because it relays a costs-benefits calculation, with dignity without life chosen over life without dignity (3.2.14). Noble Deaths, by definition, are elective, even if the choice is a restricted one. Ignatius’ claim that he dies willingly for God (ἑκὼν ὑπὲρ θεοῦ ἀποθνήσκω, Rom. 4.1) is remarkably similar to Polyxena’s assertion, “I die willingly” (ἑκοῦσα θνῄσκω, Eur. Hec. 548). Likewise, Iphigenia “willingly” gives her body to be sacrificed (Eur. IA 1553–1555).49 Ignatius casts himself as a voluntary sacrifice too.50 The importance of actively choosing death (for the right reasons) is a recurrent theme in philosophical works. Regulus is praised by Cicero for choosing extreme misfortune (that is, death by torture) for the sake of fides (“mutual faith, trust, or loyalty”) and constantia (“firmness” or “steadfastness”) (On Moral Ends 2.65) and by Seneca (Prov. 3.9 cf. Ep. 67.7, which continues to its end with further examples of Noble Death). Such choices, to prefer torture over dishonour, need not culminate in death in order to gain a moral seal of approval. Seneca argues that there is something to be chosen in torture and illness, even if he would rather not have to face them; strictly speaking, it is not troubles that are desirable (optabilia) but the virtus (“courage” or “moral excellence”) that enables their endurance (Ep. 67.4). Sometimes, pain should actively be sought, as Cicero illustrates: quid enim minus est dignum quam tibi peius quidquam videri dedecore, flagitio, turpitudine, quae ut effugias, quis est non modo non recusandus, sed non ultro appetendus, subeundus, excipiendus dolor? For what is more unworthy than for you to regard anything as worse than disgrace, crime, and baseness? And to escape these, what pain should be, 49

50

Mellink (2000), 138 briefly notes the similarity. See Friesen (2016) for a discussion of the Euripidean Polyxena as an exemplum in Philo and Clement of Alexandria, and comparison with Perpetua. Eph. 8.1, 18.1; Rom. 2.2, 4.2; cf. ἀντίψυχον (“ransom”) Smyrneans 10.2; Poly. 2.3.

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I do not say rejected but should not rather be voluntarily invited, endured and welcomed? (Tusc. 2.14)51 Ignatius’ welcoming of torture shares some common ground with Cicero and Seneca’s positions. Like them, he presents it as a means to an end, and he shares with them an emphasis on the importance of undergoing torture willingly, for the right reasons.52 The disparity between his costs (a seemingly painful death) and his benefits (eternal life,53 freedom,54 truly acquiring personhood,55 and reaching God56) is so pronounced as to make the decision straightforward. While many contemporary non-Christians might indeed reject the truth-value of his beliefs, the concept of weighing the costs and benefits of torture or death against life had honourable and morally approved precedents.

5

Practising for Death and Prerehearsal of Coming Evils

Ignatius’ readiness to die when expected benefits outweigh the costs render him a potentially rational figure. Dwelling on and preparing for death can be read as exercises of mental discipline, with famous philosophical precedents. Following a discussion of circumstances prohibiting suicide, Plato portrays Socrates as declaring that “proper philosophers” (or “those doing philosophy properly”) “practise dying, and dying is less fearful to them than to other people” (οἱ ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφοῦντες ἀποθνῄσκειν μελετῶσι, καὶ τὸ τεθνάναι ἥκιστα αὐτοῖς ἀνθρώπων φοβερόν, Plato, Phaedo 67E).57 In the wider discussion of death in the Phaedo, especially 61C–68E, Plato advocates death, but only for the right motives and at the right time: one must await a divine ἀνάγκη (“necessity”, 62C). Awaiting permission to die is discussed by Cicero with reference to Cato the Younger and Socrates (Tusc. 1.74) and Epictetus emphasises the importance of awaiting a divine sign (Discourses 1.9.16–17 cf. 3.26.29), which could differ for individuals. Ignatius portrays himself as choosing death (Rom. 4.1) and being summoned by God (7.2); in these respects, he is consistent with certain philosophical precedents. 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Transl. King (1945). See Butterweck (1995), 32–35 for a comparison of the exercise of the will in Ignatius and Epictetus. Magn. 5.1–2, Poly. 2.3. Rom. 4.3. Rom. 6.2. Eph. 12.2; Magn. 1.3; Trall. 12.2, 13.3; Rom. 2.2, 4.1, 5.3, 9.2; Smyrn. 11.1; Poly. 7.1. Cf. 80E–81A cf. Sen., Ep. 4.5, 26:8–9, interpreting Epicurus; Epict., Diatrib. 3.26.38–39.

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Ignatius’ acceptance of death can be understood as a rational response to his situation, since his benefits outweigh his costs. His emphatic embrace of death’s preceding ordeals (Rom. 4–5), though, may lend prima facie support to claims of an abnormal mentality. However, the risk of anachronistic interpretation of texts that welcome torture must be borne in mind,58 as must Cicero’s admonition that, sometimes, pain should be pursued (Tusc. 2.14). It will be fruitful to re-evaluate Rom. 4–5 in the light of a practice most closely associated with but not unique to Stoicism: praemeditatio futurorum malorum (“premeditation on coming evils”). This phrase first occurs in Cicero (Tusc. 3.29), but the concept has a long history, dating back at least as far as the Cyrenaics and, arguably, Anaxagoras and Euripides (3.29–30). According to Cicero, the Cyrenaics believed that aegritudo (“distress”) occurred where a misfortunate event was unexpected (3.28, 3.52) and the Stoic Chrysippus held that when such an event was unforeseen it struck all the more strongly (3.52). This Stoic technique involves actively imagining, in vivid detail, potential calamities coming to pass, rather than simply contemplating them.59 When these culminate in death, the shared ground between praemeditatio and μελέτη θανάτου is evident. Cicero himself, though no Stoic, recognises the benefits of pre-emptive meditation, declaring that “this anticipation therefore of the future mitigates the approach of evils whose coming one has long foreseen” (haec igitur praemeditatio futurorum malorum lenit eorum adventum, quae venientia longe ante videris, Cicero, Tusc. 3.29).60 As illustration, he translates Theseus’ speech on preparing oneself mentally for coming afflictions, such as death or exile (Eur., Fragment 964 Nauck). Similarly, Cicero names longstanding praemeditatio as a way to break down impending onslaughts (3.31). These passages occur in a broader discussion of grief, but praemeditatio can be applied to a variety of situations, for example, conquering fear. Seneca also strongly recommends premeditation, stating that “the blow of an evil which has been meditated on in advance is gentle when it arrives” (praecogitati mali mollis ictus venit, Sen. Ep. 76.34). In contrast to Cicero’s Tusc. 3.29, Seneca’s emphasis here is on physical scenarios, such as “tortures of the body” (corporis tormenta), chains, and exile.61 The idea that one can endure hardships more easily provided that they have been premeditated is a recur-

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59 60 61

Cf. Clark (1997), 105–106, “it may be unjust, or simply anachronistic, to assume that the authors and audiences of martyr-acts were deriving sadistic or masochistic pleasure from the spectacle of pain”. See Newman (1989). Transl. King (1945). Ep. 76.33.

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rent theme throughout his philosophical writings.62 He makes for illuminating comparison with Ignatius, because while many of Seneca’s scenarios for praemeditatio focus on torture, they are not necessarily accompanied by descriptions of pain.63 It is in Seneca in particular that we find negative visualisation of torture employed as a form of mental preparation and moral guidance.64 Of the many types of torture to which Seneca refers, some are those invoked by Ignatius in Rom. 4–5: fire,65 crosses,66 exposure to various animals,67 dismemberment and mutilation.68 At Letter 14.5, part of a lengthy description of types of torture, Seneca provides several of these shared terms in one passage: wild animals (cf. Ignatius, Rom. 4.1–2, 5), the stipes that formed the upright part of a cross (cf. 5.3), “limbs torn apart” (cf. the dismemberment and mutilation in 5.3), and a tunic set alight (cf. fire, 5.3). Ignatius’ vocabulary of torture is not so unusual compared to that of Seneca, then. Since these types of torture seem to be among the most common for those condemned to the arena, it is perhaps unsurprising that Ignatius would refer to them when imagining his execution. Voluntary submission to fire appears to have held a particular fascination: Valerius Maximus relates the tale of Mucius Scaevola voluntarily burning his own hand and thus undercutting Porsena’s preparations to torture him by fire (3.3.1).69 Gymnosophists are noted by Clement of Alexandria (Miscellanies 6.4.2), Philo (Every Good Man is Free 96), and Lucian (The Runaways 6–7); they may even have provided a counterpart for stories of martyrs.70 Ignatius’Rom. 5 can be read as a simple list of the sort of tortures applied to condemned criminals, or it can be understood as referencing courageous voluntary deaths.

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64 65 66

67 68 69 70

Seneca appears to take an unusual position in claiming that only the sage will benefit from praemeditatio. See Colish (2014), 100–106; Armisen-Marchetti (2008) resolves any apparent inconsistency in Seneca’s stance. The Late Stoic position is not that physical pain does not exist, but that the sage will be untroubled by it (Sen., Constant. 16.2, where he explains that pain is not to be considered an injury when virtus is undamaged; Ep. 71.27–29, 85.29; Epict. Diatrib. 1.18.19). Courtil (2014), 193 counts 259 references to torture in Seneca’s philosophical works, in contrast to 31 in the tragedies. Clem. 2.4.1; Ben. 4.21.6; Ir. 3.19.1; Ep. 7.4, 14.4, 14.5, 24.14, 66.18, 67.3, 85.26, 88.29, 98.12. To Marcia 20.3; Clem.1.23.1, 1.26.1; Ir. 3.3.6; Prov. 3.10; Ep. 98.12, 101.12. See Cook (2014), 1– 37 on the Greek and Latin terminology for various forms of crucifixion; 4–11 on σταυρός; 34–37 on crux and crucifigo. Br. 13.6; Clem. 1.18.2, 1.25.1; Ir. 3.3.6; Ep. 7.4, 14.4. Ir. 3.18.1; Ep.101.11. For a detailed list of types of tortures referred to by Seneca, see Courtil (2015), 495–499. Cf. Livy, From the Founding of the City 2.12–14; Plutarch, Publicola 17.3–4; Sen., Ep. 24.5. Cf. Kozlowski (2011), 15–22.

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Seneca also suggests an alternative technique, of diverting the mind (avertere) from the pain (dolor) of illness by thinking of, for example, one who has conquered pain (victor doloris), or who continued smiling throughout torture despite the torturers applying “all the implements of their cruelty” (omnia instrumenta crudelitatis suae, Sen. Ep. 78.18). “Won’t pain, which is defeated by a smile, be defeated by reason (ratio)?”, he asks (78.18). He immediately progresses the exercise to more graphic images of torture: Quidquid vis nunc licet dicas, destillationes et vim continuae tussis egerentem viscerum partes et febrem praecordia ipsa torrentem et sitim et artus in diversum articulis exeuntibus tortos: plus est flamma et eculeus et lamina et vulneribus ipsis intumescentibus quod illa renovaret et altius urgueret inpressum. You may mention whatever you want now, catarrhs, the force of a continuous cough which drives out bits of your innards, and fever which burns the stomach, thirst, limbs twisted with joints sticking out in different directions: worse is fire, the horse-shaped rack, the metal plates, the instrument that renews wounds while they are still swollen and pushes the indentation deeper. (Ep. 78.19) The symptoms of illnesses escalate in severity, then are surpassed by tortures of increasing ingenuity (as Seneca notes in Ep.14.4–6, the paraphernalia of torture hold particular horror). The escalation of ordeals reflects a potential progression in the discipline of negative visualisation. Seneca advocates dwelling on torture as a beneficial, rational exercise to conquer pain, whether by prophylactic praemediatio or, as in Letter 78, as therapy for present pain. Like Seneca, Ignatius describes specific forms of torture, and he does so in a way that implicitly invites the audience to visualise events. Someone hearing the sort of vivid detail provided by Ignatius or Seneca can participate in the imagination of torture,71 and thus anticipate it too. If Ignatius’ visualisation of torture in Rom. 4.2 and 5.3 is compared to Seneca’s in Letter 14 or 78, for example, there is little difference in terms of the intensity of their descriptions of probably painful experiences. Seneca’s allusions to torture in his philosophical works vastly outweigh Ignatius’ few explicit references. However, Seneca’s reputation has not been tarnished to the same degree as Ignatius’ in modern

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Cf. Edwards (1999), 259: “the mind of the reader becomes the theater”.

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scholarship. Even allowing for attribution to Seneca of an unhealthy taste in imagery,72 he tends to retain the reputation of a rational thinker. Epictetus, Ignatius’ probable contemporary, employs concepts of training by and for hardship. In Book 3 of the Discourses he defines philosophy as preparation for the things that befall one (3.10.6) and, following a discussion of death, he offers the advice to “keep these thoughts at hand night and day, write them, read them, make them your speech” and explains that if something unwanted happens the first thing to encourage one will be the fact that it was not unexpected (Diatrib. 3.24.103–104). The therapeutic power of praemeditatio to “encourage” one is the result of the prophylactic nature of its very performance. Epictetus advocates mental preparation for unwanted and unpleasant events: Θάνατος καὶ φυγὴ καὶ πάντα τὰ δεινὰ φαινόμενα πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν ἔστω σοι καθ’ ἡμέραν, μάλιστα δὲ πάντων ὁ θάνατος· καὶ οὐδὲν οὐδέποτε οὔτε ταπεινὸν ἐνθυμηθήσῃ οὔτε ἄγαν ἐπιθυμήσεις τινός. Let death and exile and all sorts of awful things be before your eyes, daily, but most of all death; and you will never think any downcast thought nor will you ever desire anything excessively. (Epictetus, Encheiridion 21) With striking similarity, in the midst of his prerehearsal of forms of torture, Ignatius states that he is learning to “desire nothing” (μηδὲν ἐπιθυμεῖν, Rom. 4.3). This includes bodily integrity; the preceding description of his body’s destruction, to the point where it is no longer visible (Rom. 4.2), is similar to Seneca’s imagining of the obliteration of one’s body (Ep. 102.27), when anticipating death. Marcus Aurelius also advocates daily prerehearsal (Meditation 2.1). Judith Perkins argues persuasively for Ignatius’ letters and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (written after Ignatius’ death) to be understood as revealing “ideology” rather than “pathology”.73 She explores Marcus Aurelius’ practice of meditatio but does not treat Ignatius’ statements in Romans as a form of praemeditatio.

72 73

See Courtil’s (2014), 189–190 rebuttal of such explanations for the prominence of torture in Seneca. Perkins (1995), 173, 189–192. However, her claim that a “new subjectivity of the human person”, i.e., as a “suffering body”, was under construction in the early Roman empire (1995), 173, perhaps does not give due recognition to earlier, non-Christian explorations of pain and subjectivity. See Cobb (2016), 18–23 and King (2017), 8–9, for assessments of Perkins’s approach.

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Doing so would support her case that Ignatius was not “aberrant” but part of a wider discourse; however, such a discourse need not place the “emphasis on pain” in his case.74 He does not discuss the experience of pain; rather, he emphasises the instrumental and transformational role of undergoing torture. In keeping with Chrysippus, Cicero, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Epictetus, Ignatius’ literary anticipation of future events can aid their endurance. Galen explores Posidonius’ technique of “familiarising oneself in advance” (προενδημεῖν, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 4.7.7–8). He incorporates the related praemeditatio into his own system of therapy by approvingly quoting Theseus’ pre-emptive imagining of disasters to mitigate their bite.75 Praemeditatio lends itself to combination with other forms of therapy: Galen says that the “wise man” (ὁ σοφὸς ἀνὴρ) remembers everything he is liable “to undergo” (παθεῖν) (On the Avoidance of Grief 53); Galen also trains himself by observing daily the cruelties of Commodus (54). The practice of praemeditatio was not universally approved, however. The Epicureans proposed alternative therapeutic disciplines: avocatio (directing the mind away from unpleasant thoughts) and revocatio (redirecting it to pleasant thoughts).76 Their techniques may have held wider appeal where Stoic approaches to pain might seem counter-intuitive. An association with Stoicism in general, or indeed philosophy more broadly considered, would not necessarily meet with approval in all quarters. There may be such a thing as pursuing philosophy too keenly for a Roman senator (Tac., Agricola 4). Socrates provided an exemplar for some, for example, Cicero,77 Seneca,78 Cato the Younger, according to Plutarch,79 and Epictetus.80 However, Cato the Elder apparently disapproved of Socrates, philosophy, and Greek culture (Plutarch, Cato the Elder 23.1–3), consequently expelling visiting philosophers from Rome (22.2–5). Following the Pisonian conspiracy, Nero sentenced the “Stoic martyrs” to death or banishment (Tac., Ann. 15.48–16.34); Musonius Rufus was exiled twice. Vespasian expelled philosophers from Rome, as did Domitian, who later banished them from Italy, Epictetus among them. Stoics might be seen to present potential opposition to autocratic rulers and there exists the

74 75 76 77 78 79 80

Contra Perkins (1995), 173. Eur., Fr. 964 Nauck, quoted at On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 4.7.9–10; On the Avoidance of Grief 52, 77 cf. Cicero’s quotation, Tusc. 3.29. Cicero, Tusc., 3.33. Tusc. 1.71. Ep. 104.27–28; On the Happy Life 27. Cato the Younger 68.2–3; 70.1. Diatrib. 1.9.22–25, 4.1.159–170.

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broader question of potentially “subversive” behaviour among intellectuals.81 Taken to an extreme, the latter could be the subject of ridicule.82 To associate Ignatius with Stoicism or philosophical practices is not to confer straightforward legitimation. Those who advocated praemeditatio portrayed it as an exercise of reason over the passions, to fortify oneself. Ignatius had excellent reasons to employ a literary praemeditatio: to strengthen himself for death in the arena (Rom. 3.2),83 and to prepare the Roman congregation. The recipients of the Letter to the Romans were far better placed geographically than other congregations to attempt to disrupt his martyrdom. This may explain the difference in tone between it and the other letters.84 Ignatius’ readiness for martyrdom has been described as “understandable under the circumstances”,85 but it does not need to be excused or qualified if it is configured as a form of praemeditatio.86 This exercise was held, by some, to be both prophylactic and therapeutic, and thus beneficial to its practitioner.87 In this light, Romans 4 and 5 can be read as taking a rational approach to preparing oneself for impending torture and death.

6

Wider Comparisons

When situated within in the wider cultural landscape, Romans 4–5 appears less and less remarkable. There are many potential comparisons when it comes to lingering descriptions of pain and torture; of specific interest are passages that anticipate such experiences. Rom. 5.3 is reminiscent of the gladiator’s oath, a version of which may be found in Seneca, “to be burned, to be bound, and to be killed by the sword” (uri, vinciri, ferroque necari, Sen. Ep. 37.1–2), and Petronius, “we swore an oath to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword” (iuravimus: uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari, Petronius, Satyricon 117). The concatenation of physical assaults is less detailed than Rom. 4.1–2

81

82 83 84 85 86 87

Francis (1995), esp. 1–11 on Stoicism. One reason why a philosopher could present such a subversive figure was the conception of philosophy as a “way of life”, with practical implications for one’s role in society. See Hadot (1995). Lucian, On the Death of Peregrinus; similarities between Ignatius and Lucian’s portrayal of Peregrinus can be demonstrated. Brent (2006a), 453–455. Cf. Kelley (2006), 733–734, who however does not discuss Ignatius. Cf. Holmes (2007), 169. Schoedel (1985), 10, cf. Holmes (2007), 169–170. Castelli (2004), 82 describes Ignatius’ “preparation” as a “spiritual exercise” but does not compare it to praemeditatio. Cf. Nussbaum (2009), 26–42 on the wider therapeutic role of ethics.

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or 5.2–3, but the vocabulary of fire is common to both, and elsewhere Ignatius refers to being bound88 and in chains.89 Carole Straw suggests that Ignatius uses the gladiator’s vow “as the model for his oath”.90 There is no clear evidence that he does so intentionally; however, it is the potential for audiences to make the association that is significant. Ignatius embraces death willingly (Rom. 4.1), but there is an inherent ambiguity in the gladiator’s oath, which could be given under duress or made freely.91 A further consideration is the liminality of the gladiator: usually a slave, whose body is exploited and a spectacle for audience pleasure, yet who could gain great celebrity and even supply authors such as Cicero (Tusc. 2.41–42) and Seneca (Ep. 30.8) with exempla of courage, despite their frequent disdain. Romans 4–5 can be read as mental preparation for a fight, as is consistent with Ignatius’ configuration of himself as combatant, an animal-fighter, θηριομάχης, rather than a victim. The use of combative language, such as θηριομαχέω92 is also evocative of Seneca’s use of agonistic terminology in his philosophical works: he frequently employs gladiatorial and military metaphors for facing the hardships of life. To draw such a comparison is not to suggest that Ignatius is deliberately invoking Seneca.93 However, the potential exists for a contemporary audience to make this association. Evoking the gladiator and the animal-fighter could make Ignatius’ statements relatable for a varied audience. 4Maccabees also presents an especially pertinent comparison with Ignatius. This synthesis of Judaism and elements of Stoic philosophy illustrates how true religion could be considered true philosophy, and reason and piety could be configured as going hand in hand. It also provides a reminder that Stoicism, broadly defined, was part of the intellectual fabric of the Graeco-Roman world. It need not have been widely accepted, nor the complexities of differing Stoic positions understood, in order for it to offer a recognisable frame of reference for facing physical pain. Of particular relevance are the descriptions of patient endurance of various types of torture that demonstrate the power of ἀρετή (“moral excellence”) and εὐσεβὴς λογισμός (“pious reason”)94 as ruler of τῶν παθῶv (here, “the emotions”). The tortures are described in detail, and some 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Eph. 1.2, 3.1, 21.2; Phil.5.1. Eph. 11.2; Magn. 1.2. Straw (2001), 45 cf. Edwards (2007), 211. Slavery need not negate the ability to assent freely to such an oath. Seneca presents it as a metaphor for the Stoic pupil’s commitment (Ep. 37.1–2), to be undertaken willingly. Eph. 1.2; Trall. 10.1; Rom. 5.1. The most obvious touchstone here is Paul, who also uses θηριομαχέω (1 Corinthians 15:32) cf. Germanicus in The Martyrdom of Polycarp (3.1). 4Maccabees 1.1–2.

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of the Maccabean martyrs anticipate them in a manner which simultaneously displays courage and undercuts the power of the torturer: Τέμνετέ μου τὰ μέλη καὶ πυροῦτέ μου τὰς σάρκας καὶ στρεβλοῦτε τὰ ἄρθρα. [18] διὰ πασῶν γὰρ ὑμᾶς πείσω τῶν βασάνων ὅτι μόνοι παῖδες Ἑβραίων ὑπὲρ ἀρετῆς εἰσιν ἀνίκητοι. Cut my limbs and burn my flesh and twist my joints. [18] For through all these tortures I shall persuade you that the children of the Hebrews alone are unconquerable because of moral excellence. (4 Maccabees 9.17–18) Ignatius’ Romans 4 and 5 pale in comparison with the prolonged and varied descriptions of tortures applied to Eleazar and the seven brothers throughout 4 Maccabees. The Maccabeans’ patient endurance95 of present pain and anticipation of future tortures undermines the power of their torturers. Similarly, Achilles Tatius’ heroine, Leucippe, also challenges her persecutor to do his worst. τὰς βασάνους παράστησον, φερέτω τροχόν· ἰδοὺ χεῖρες, τεινέτω. φερέτω καὶ μάστιγας· ἰδοὺ νῶτον, τυπτέτω. κομιζέτω πῦρ· ἰδοὺ σῶμα, καιέτω. 2 φερέτω καὶ σίδηρον· ἰδοὺ δέρη, σφαζέτω. ἀγῶνα θεάσασθε καινόν· πρὸς πάσας τὰς βασάνους ἀγωνίζεται μία γυνή, καὶ πάντα νικᾷ. Set out your tortures, bring up the wheel. Here are my arms, stretch them out. Bring your scourges too: here is my back, smite upon it. Bring your fire; here is my body, burn it. Bring also the sword; here is my neck, pierce it. Feast your eyes with a new sight; one woman contends against all manner of tortures, and overcomes all her trials. (Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon 6.21.1–2)96 The strikingly ekphrastic nature of Achilles Tatius’ novel has been analysed in recent scholarship.97 For our purposes, we may compare the visualisation of torture here with the technique deployed by Seneca: the audience is repeatedly

95

96 97

Like Ignatius, 4Maccabees extols patient endurance (ὑπομονή, ὑπομένω) 9.8; 9.22; 9.30; 15.30; 15.32; 16.1; 16.8; 16.17; 16.19; 16.21; 17.4; 17.7; 17.10; 17.12; 17.17; 17.23 (twice). See Perler (1949) on similarities between the Ignatian letters and 4 Maccabees. Transl. Gaselee (1984). Morales (2004); King (2012), 147–157 and (2017), 194–216.

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instructed by Leucippe to look (ἰδοὺ) and finally to “witness” a “new contest”.98 Ignatius makes no such command, but the concatenation of ordeals and the context of spectacle invites a literal imagining.99 The Maccabean martyrs and Leucippe exemplify ὑπομονή, whereby appearance of physical passivity is in fact a means of asserting mental agency.100 In this, their resistance to tyranny overlaps with Stoic attitudes to facing pain. Likewise, Ignatius’ anticipation of torture aligns him with familiar scenarios of patient endurance of pain and death, when undergone for the right reasons.

7

Conclusion

Ignatius’ anticipation of torture in Romans can be read as admirable, on several grounds. It appears to reflect a rational choice, because his perceived benefits outweigh his costs. It is consistent with exemplary Jewish and Classical precedents of Noble Death. His combative language evokes the gladiator’s oath and associated courage. He configures himself as becoming a μαθητής because of choosing torture, situating himself within a framework of πάθει μάθος. His anticipation of torture can be understood as training him in ὑπομονή and he appears to prepare himself mentally by what looks very much like the Stoic discipline of praemeditatio. It must be admitted, however, that some of Ignatius’ remarks in other letters run no risk of evoking Stoicism, especially, “while I strongly desire to undergo/the undergoing” (ἀγαπῶ μὲν γὰρ τὸ παθεῖν, Trall. 4.2). This comment should be contextualised against his overriding association between Christ and πάσχω and πάθος101 and their role as means to an end. The fact remains that there is no pretence of aspiring to ἀπάθεια (“detachment”) in his letters. However, he need not be seen to espouse Stoic doctrine in order for his anticipation of torture to evoke a similar Stoic practice. Meditating on future evils was

98

99 100

101

Μαρτυρέω in Ignatius has not yet acquired its later sense of a technical term for Christian martyrdom, on which the literature is vast. See Moss (2012), 2–6 on definitions of the term. See King (2012), 152–157 on the significance of Leucippe’s configuration of her torture as an ἀγών to be witnessed. See Castelli (2004), 104–133 on the role of vision and spectacle in martyrdom accounts. Contra Shaw (1996), 278, 4Maccabees does not render ὑπομονή a “novel value”: Aristotle associates it with ἀνδρεία (Nichomachean Ethics 1115a6), cf. Cicero (Tusc. 2.43, 4.53) and Seneca (Ep. 67.10) on patientia and fortitudo. See Denzey (2010), 185–188 on martyrdom as an act of will. Eph. 7.2, 18.2; Trall. salutation, 10.1, 11.2; Rom. 6.3; Smyrn. 2 (three times), Poly. 3.2.

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not a sign of deviant behaviour in the Graeco-Roman world. On the contrary, it was a technique for strengthening one’s mental health. The striking discrepancy between the ancient and some modern opinions of Ignatius may arise from an anachronistic interpretation of Rom. 4 and 5 that does not recognise the moral and intellectual benefits of pre-emptive meditation and negative visualisation. Whether or not Ignatius truly practised this technique cannot be known. There remains, however, a sense in which the very act of putting his anticipation in writing constitutes a literary performance of praemeditatio (cf. Epict., Diatrib. 1.1.25). It is this which is significant for his audience, independent of the author’s intent. Comparing Romans 4 and 5 to praemeditatio futurorum malorum is just one possible reading of these passages, but it is one which raises serious doubt as to whether his anticipation of torture therein would necessarily appear ‘abnormal’ to contemporary and near-contemporary audiences. When placed in its cultural context, his anticipation of torture appears, in certain respects, rational and exemplary. Associating Rom. 4 and 5 with praemeditatio futurorum malorum offers a degree of legitimation for his anticipation of martyrdom by contextualising it within an established value system that, while not universally espoused, was recognisable and time-honoured. Although Ignatius’ letters are addressed to Christians, they hold the potential to speak to non-Christians in a very familiar language.

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others (transl.), The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984 vol. 1. New York: The New York Press, pp. 207–222. Francis, J. (1995) Subversive Virtue: Ascetism and Authority in the Second-Century Pagan World. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Frend, W. (1981) Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. [repr. of 1965, Oxford: Basil Blackwell]. Friesen, C. (2016) ‘Dying Like a Woman: Euripides’ Polyxena as Exemplum between Philo and Clement of Alexandria’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 56: 623–645. Gibbon, E. (1994) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume the First. D. Womersley (ed.). Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 London: Penguin. Gilliam, P. (2017) Ignatius of Antioch and the Arrian Controversy. (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 140). Leiden: Brill. Greenberg, L. (2009) “My Share of God’s Reward”: Exploring the Roles and Formulations of the Afterlife in Early Christian Martyrdom. (Studies in Biblical Literature 121). New York: Peter Lang. Hadot, P. (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. A. Davidson (ed.) and M. Chase (transl.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Kahneman, D. (2003) A Perspective on Judgement and Choice: Mapping Bounded Rationality. American Psychologist 58(9): 697–720. Kelley, N. (2006) ‘Philosophy as Training for Death: Reading the Ancient Christian Martyr Acts as Spiritual Exercises’, Church History 75(4): 723–747. King, D. (2012) ‘“Taking it like a man”: Gender, identity and the body in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon’, in M. Pinheiro & M. Skinner & and F. Zeitlin (eds), Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex, and Gender in the Ancient Novel. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 147–157. King, D. (2018) Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kozlowski, J. (2011) ‘Polycarp as a Christian Gymnosophist’, in A. Brent et al. (eds), Studia Patristica, vol. 51. Leuven: Peeters, pp. 15–22. Lightfoot, J. (1889a) The Apostolic Fathers. Part 2, vol. 1: Revised Texts with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations and Translations. 2nd Ed. London: Macmillan. Lightfoot, J. (1889b) The Apostolic Fathers. Part 2, vol. 2: Revised Texts with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations and Translations. 2nd Ed. London: Macmillan. Lookadoo, J. (2020) ‘The Date and Authenticity of the Ignatian Letters: An Outline of Recent Discussions’, Currents in Biblical Research 19 (1): 88–114. Lotz, J. -P. (2007) Ignatius and Concord: The Background and use of the Language of Concord in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch. New York: Peter Lang. McConnell, S. (2014) Philosophical Life in Cicero’s Letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Mellink, A. (2000) Death as Eschaton: A Study of Ignatius of Antioch’s Desire for Death. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Morales. H. (2004) Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moss, C. (2010a) The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Ideologies of Martyrdom. New York: Oxford University Press. Moss, C. (2010b) ‘On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity’, Early Christianity 1 (4): 539–574. Moss, C. (2012) Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions. New Haven: Yale University Press. Newman, R. (1989) ‘Cotidie Meditare: theory and practice of the meditatio in imperial Stoicism’, in W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, ii. 36.3, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 1474–1517. Nussbaum, M. (2009) The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [repr. of 1994]. Perkins, J. (1995) The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. London: Routledge. Perler, O. (1949) ‘Das Vierte Makkabaeerbuch: Ignatius von Antiochien und die AEltesten Martyrerberichte’, Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 25: 47–72. Riddle, D. (1931) The Martyrs: A Study in Social Control. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Schoedel, W. (1985) Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Seeley, D. (1990) The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul’s Concept of Salvation. (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 28). Sheffield: JSOT Press. Shaw, B. (1996) ‘Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (3): 269–312. Stark, R. (1996) The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Straw, C. (2001) ‘“A Very Special Death”: Christian Martyrdom in its Classical Context’, in M. Cormack (ed), Sacrificing the Self: Perspectives on Martyrdom and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 39–57. Streeter, B. (1929) The Primitive Church. London: Macmillan. Talbert, C. (1991) Learning Through Suffering: The Educational Value of Suffering in the New Testament and Its Milieu. (Zacchaeus Studies: New Testament). Collegeville: The Liturgical Press. Tanner, R. (1985) ‘Martyrdom in Saint Ignatius of Antioch and the Stoic View of Suicide’, in E. Livingstone (ed), Studia Patristica, vol. xvi: Papers presented to the Seventh International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1975. Berlin: AkademieVerlag, pp. 201–205.

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Thaler, R. & Sunstein, C. (2021) Nudge: The Final Edition. London: Allen Lane. Trevett, C. (1992) A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia. (Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, vol. 29). Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. van der Blom, H. (2010) Cicero’s Role Models: The Political Strategy of a Newcomer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Henten, J. and Avemarie, F. (eds) (2002) Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity. London: Routledge. Vinzent, M. (2019) Writing the History of Early Christianity: From Reception to Retrospection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

chapter 11

The Bishop’s Case Book: Augustine on Pain Gillian Clark

Innocentius was distraught with pain and fear. He had clung to the hope that a second surgical operation would not be needed, but his doctors now agreed that it would. The first operation had caused both acute and chronic pain. He did not think he could survive another. Among the friends who gathered in his house at Carthage, the capital city of Roman Africa, was Augustine, recently returned from a first career as a professor of rhetoric in Africa and Italy. Forty years on, Augustine bishop of Hippo used his rhetorical expertise in a narrative which evokes the voice of a terrified patient and the concern of his anxious friends. The pain of Innocentius provides the most vivid example in a dossier of healings which Augustine included in the final book of City of God.1 The dossier is there to make the point that miracles still happen. Forty years earlier, Augustine thought that “visible miracles” belonged to the early years of the church, but were no longer needed when the church had spread throughout the world; moreover, if they had continued, they might have become too familiar, and people might have come to expect visible signs.2 But in City of God 22 he affirmed that miracles continue, through Christian sacraments (that is, visible signs of spiritual events, in particular baptism and the eucharist) and through the prayers and relics of the saints. Many healings in the dossier are associated with the relics of St Stephen, the first martyr, which had been brought to North Africa a decade before.3 Miracles, Augustine said, testify to the great miracles, namely Christ’s bodily resurrection and the spread of belief in the resurrection even though the witnesses were “few, obscure, unimportant, uneducated”.4 The miracles recorded

1 Civ. 22.8, written c. 426/7. Augustine did not subdivide the books of City of God. Medieval editors introduced chapter-divisions, but it is difficult to locate a reference in a long chapter such as this. Specific references to book and chapter in Civ. are therefore followed by page and line in the Corpus Christianorum edition. All translations are my own; any references without an author’s name are to works of Augustine. 2 de Ver. rel. 47, written c. 390. 3 Brought probably by Orosius c. 416: Van Nuffelen (2012), 3. 4 Civ. 22.5 (811.42–43).

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in canonical scripture are impressed on the memory by frequent reading,5 but these more recent miracles are known to few, especially if they happen in a big city. Faithful Christians pass on the news to others, but there is no authority comparable to that of scripture to confirm it. Augustine contrasted two healings from his own experience; he did not say that forty years had passed and that at the time he did not interpret them as miracles. He was in Milan when a dream guided Bishop Ambrose to the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius. Milan is an important city, the emperor was then in residence, and a great crowd gathered, so there were many witnesses when a blind man had his sight restored. Augustine did not claim to be among them, though he said in a sermon on the feast-day of the martyrs “I was there, I was at Milan, I knew the facts of this miracle”.6 (He did not add that Ambrose sent relics of the martyrs to many places, no doubt with an account of the discovery.7) So the miracle at Milan was widely known, but only a very few at Carthage know about the healing of Innocentius, former advocate in the service of the governor.8 Augustine was there, this time as an eye-witness. He and his friend Alypius had come back from overseas; they were not yet ordained but were “slaves of God” (servi Dei) living a life committed to God. Innocentius, who with all his household was very devout, had taken them up, and they were staying in his house. ‘Overseas’ meant Italy, as it usually did for people from Roman Africa, the region which extended west from Egypt along the Mediterranean coast. Augustine and Alypius returned from Italy around 388ce. Both had been in Milan when the blind man regained his sight, Augustine as the publicly funded professor of rhetoric, Alypius looking for work as a legal adviser to officials of the imperial civil service.9 Forty years on, in City of God 22, Augustine observed that of the clergy who made daily visits to Innocentius, Saturninus bishop of Uzalis was dead, and only Aurelius, now bishop of Carthage, was still active and had often spoken with Augustine about these events. Of the doctors, Ammonius, the only one named, was even then of an advanced age, and had since died. No relics are mentioned in the story of Innocentius: only doctors, 5 Civ. 22.8 (825.400). 6 Serm. 286.5.4; on the development of Augustine’s memories, O’Donnell (1992), 3.112–113 on Conf. 9.7.16. McLynn (1994), 211–215 on the discovery of Protasius and Gervasius. 7 There were relics at Argentarium, within thirty miles of Hippo: Civ. 22.8 (820.215–217). 8 Ex advocato vicariae praefecturae, Civ.22.8 (815.46–47). The vicarius of a prefecture was the emperor’s deputy as civil governor of a region. Advocati, the equivalent of barristers, might work as civil servants: Jones (1964), 1.508; on their roles, Humfress (2007), 93–132, especially 100–101. 9 Alypius worked as an assessor, that is, a legal adviser who “sat beside” (adsidebat) an official who did not have legal training: Conf. 6.10.16.

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who were treating him for anal fistula. This term is still in use for ‘pipes’ or channels which result from an abscess or from previous surgery. Symptoms include skin irritation, throbbing pain, discharge and fever, and surgery is recommended in most cases. Celsus, writing three centuries before Augustine, offered technical advice which helps to explain why Innocentius was so afraid of further surgery. A surgeon, he wrote, must feel pity in the sense that he wants to cure his patient, but not in the sense that he is moved by the patient’s “outcry” (clamor) to go faster than the case requires or to cut less than is necessary; he should do everything as if no emotion arose from another person’s “wailing” (vagitus), a word often used of a baby’s cries.10 On fistulae, Celsus advised using a probe to establish the depth of the fistula, whether it is wet or dry, whether it has reached bone, and how much decay has developed. The amount, colour and texture of pus is also informative. A poultice may be enough to treat the condition.11 Innocentius had several interconnected fistulae in, as Augustine politely put it, the lowest back part of the body. Augustine used plain language, not technical terms: “the doctors had already cut him, and were carrying out medical treatment; in that cutting (sectio) he had experienced pains both long-lasting and bitter (et diuturnos et acerbos dolores).”12 Eventually all the fistulae which were open, and could be treated, healed. One remained. It ought to have been opened by surgery, but it was hidden and had not been touched. Innocentius clutched at the advice of the doctors who said what he wanted to hear and promised to heal him by medicines, without surgery. Several doctors appear in the story. One is on the household staff, but the others exclude him even from watching the first operation, and when he predicts a second, Innocentius throws him out of the house and is only with difficulty persuaded to take him back. A senior doctor, Ammonius, is brought in for consultation. Eventually all the doctors acknowledge that a cure is not possible without the “knife” ( ferrum). Innocentius is appalled. He dismisses them all, and once he is able to think, calls in a specialist: a much-admired “surgeon” (chirurgus) from Alexandria, one of the most famous centres of medicine in the classical world. This well-mannered expert studies the scars, admires the skill of his colleagues, and says that it would be wrong to displace them and take the credit for the cure. He persuades Innocentius to recall them, and agrees to be present for the second operation the next day. 10 11 12

Cels. 7 prooem. 4. Ib. 5.28.12c–d. Jackson (1988), 125 notes that for anal fistula, a rectal speculum would also be needed. Civ. 22.8 (816.53–55).

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From his previous “pains” (poenae), Augustine says, so great a fear had invaded Innocentius that he had no doubt he would die in the hands of the doctors, and “when the doctors had left, so much grief (dolor) arose in that house from the extreme misery of its master that it was like lamentation at a funeral, and we could scarcely restrain it.”13 Innocentius and the visiting clergy pray fervently, and at his request they return early the next day to be with him: The doctors came in. Everything required on this occasion is made ready. All are stunned and in suspense as the fearsome instruments (tremenda ferramenta) are brought out. While those of greater authority raise his failing spirit with consolation, his limbs are arranged on the couch for the hands of the man who will cut, the fastenings of the bandages are untied, the place is laid bare, the doctor inspects it and, armed and intent, investigates the recess which is to be cut. He scrutinises it with his eyes, feels it with his fingers, tests it in every way: he finds a completely firm scar. (Civ. 22.8 [818.123–132])14 Students of rhetoric learned the techniques of ekphrasis, that is, description intended to make the audience see what was described.15 Augustine’s readers might themselves have had the experience of fear at the prospect of extreme pain: he wanted all of them to see the suffering of Innocentius and the distress of his friends, and to appreciate the miraculous healing which rescued him. Some aspects of this account are especially important for Augustine’s understanding of pain. First, the stark language of “cutting” contrasts with the vagueness about other “medical treatment”. Augustine mentions bandages, because they have to be removed in preparation for surgery, but not salves or drugs or any kind of analgesic.16 This is in keeping with his other references to medicine, especially in sermons. “Christ the doctor” is one of Augustine’s most-used metaphors, sometimes contrasted with the fallible human doctors, like those who treated Innocentius, who disagree and challenge each other’s expertise and cannot be certain that their painful methods will achieve a cure.17 In the first book of City of God, arguing (in relation to rape) that the body does not have 13 14 15 16

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Civ. 22.8 (817.95–97). See below (n.20) for the analogy with judicial torture. Webb (2009). Mandrake, which provides hyoscine and atropine, could be used before sectio so that it was not felt: Plin. HN 25.94.150. Gal. MM 10 816K lists poppy juice, henbane seed, mandrake root and storax among analgesics. On surgery and surgical instruments, Jackson (1988), 69–70, 112–116. Arbesmann (1954); on medical metaphors in late antiquity, Mayer (2018).

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to be intact in order to be holy, Augustine instanced wounds, then observed that “doctors, in the service of health, do things to the body from which our sight recoils”.18 In the final book, he spoke of the “cruel diligence” of the doctors called anatomists, who cut into the body of the dead, or even of the dying who (as Innocentius feared) are “still in the hands of the one who cuts and scrutinises”; their purpose is to understand the interior of the body and how it should be treated.19 In a survey of the evils of human life, Augustine included illness and painful treatment: From the body itself so many evils arise from diseases that not all are included even in the books of doctors, and in many if not all of these the very aids and medicaments are torments (tormenta), so that people are rescued from death in pain by painful help (a poenarum exitio poenali eruantur auxilio). (Civ. 22.22 [844.89–94]) This is the vocabulary of pain which is inflicted as punishment. Tormenta means “torture”, which could lawfully be used, if the presiding judge so ordered, on suspects and even on witnesses; the “fearsome instruments” of torture could be displayed in the courtroom. Poena means “penalty”, which in late Roman law could be physical punishment inflicted on people of low status: usually flogging, less severely with rods or more severely with the lead-tipped “scourge” ( flagellum) which could cause mutilation or death. Extreme punishments included death by burning.20 Healing comes with pain, both in human medicine and in the divine medicine which has remedies for all kinds of spiritual ills. Augustine makes some mentions of gentle healing, both metaphorical and actual: support in extreme weakness; diet and lifestyle; soothing poultices. In Christian Teaching, for example, he compares divine healing, adapted to the individual patient, to bandages which match the shape of a wound so that a kind of beauty results from their utility; alongside this ‘like for like’ there is treatment by ‘unlike’, as when cold is applied to heat and dry to moist.21 In Literal Interpretation of Genesis, he comments on the use doctors make of things created by God:

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19 20 21

Civ. 1.18 (19.25–27). The suggestion that medical interventions are themselves a source of pain is common in medical texts themselves as well, compare Baltussen (this volume, 16 n. 21 and 27 T8). Civ. 22.24 (850.145–150). Clark (2006) on the infliction of pain in the late Roman judicial system. Doct. chr. 1.27 = 1.14.13.

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a doctor prescribes diet for a sick person and medicine for a wounded one, not from things he created himself but from things he finds already created by the work of the Creator; he can prepare and administer food and drink, shape the plaster (emplastrum), spread the ointment on it, and apply it; but can he work to create strength or flesh with the things he uses? (de Gen. litt. 9.27) But references to gentle healing are outnumbered by references to salutary pain which the patient must undergo or die: cutting, burning (cautery), and even amputation. Augustine presents an example in a sermon. “Someone has through intemperance fallen into bodily disease, and something is born in his body that needs to be cut; he will undoubtedly suffer pains (dolores), but those pains will not be fruitless for him”. This patient’s doctor also gives instructions on diet and lifestyle; he will be cured “by following the instructions and by bearing the pains”; he caused the festering ulcer he suffers (in ulcere putrido positus) by not following the instructions when he was healthy, and the pain is his fault.22 In another sermon, Augustine takes the example of St Paul, the persecutor who by God’s grace became a great apostle; in this desperate case Christ our doctor and saviour showed the greatness of his skill, just as doctors show the power of their skill in desperate cases.23 Paul wrote that he was given a thorn in the flesh, an angel of the devil to batter him, so that he should not be exalted; three times he asked God to take it away.24 Augustine compared this experience to that of a patient with “abdominal swellings” (viscera tumebant): he often used tumor as a metaphor for arrogance. The doctor applies a “distressing and burning poultice” (epithema molestum et ardens). The patient begins to be tortured (cruciari) by the treatment, and begs the doctor to remove the epithema; but the doctor, who knows it is beneficial, consoles him and counsels endurance.25 Augustine uses both poenae and dolor of the pain of Innocentius. Poenae connotes pain as punishment or correction; dolor covers both his physical pain and the emotional pain which he and his household so plangently dis-

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Serm. 278.4.4. En. Psal. 130.7. 2 Cor. 12:7. Augustine sometimes used Greek medical terms, for instance when he wrote to a friend (ep.88.1) about his own sufferings in and around the rectum; on variants in medical vocabulary, see Langslow (2000). He could have learned from his own experience, or from his conversations with Vindicianus (PLRE 9.167), former physician to Valentinian ii, see Conf. 4.3.5, with O’Donnell (1992) 2:214.

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play.26 Innocentius is not a Stoic: he cannot control distress and fear and anger when he is told something he does not want to accept. Dolor has a wide range. Augustine won a prize at school for a prose speech expressing the sentiments of Juno in a very well-known passage of Virgil: she experienced anger and dolor, which in this case was resentment that she, queen of the Gods, could not keep the Trojans from reaching Italy.27 In general, dolor is a likely translation of Greek lupê, “grief” or “distress”, one of the four generic emotions identified by Stoic philosophers: fear and desire, grief and joy.28 Discussing emotions in book 14 of City of God, Augustine commented that Cicero used aegritudo to translate lupê, and Virgil used dolor, but that he had himself chosen to use tristitia “because aegritudo and dolor are more commonly used of bodies”.29 This may be a correct general observation about language use, but Augustine frequently used dolor of emotions. He chose tristitia in that specific context because he was engaged in rejecting the Platonist view that emotions come from the body to disrupt the soul, so that only by escaping from the body can the soul return to its home in heaven.30 Virgil expressed this view in Aeneid book 6, where Aeneas visits the underworld and his father Anchises explains what will happen to the souls he sees there. Aeneas is shocked to learn that souls await return to bodies which weigh them down, “from which they fear and desire, grieve (dolent) and rejoice.” Why then would souls return?31 “Our faith is different,” Augustine said: “the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul is the punishment (poena), not the cause, of the first sin; it is not the corruptible flesh which made the soul sinful, but the sinful soul which made the flesh corruptible”.32 That is, the primal sin of disobedience to God, which comes from the soul, made human beings subject to bodily decay and death. Corruptible bodies experience pain. Augustine noted that Cicero calls emotions perturbationes, “disturbances”, but most people call them passiones, a word for word translation from the Greek.33 He did not say at this point that the Greek word is pathos, something which you undergo: it can be simply “experience”, but more often it means pain26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Courtil (this volume, 98–99) on the range of Greek terms for which dolor is the only Latin equivalent. Conf. 1.17.27; Verg. A. 1.36–49. Byers (2012) on Augustine’s response to Stoic views of emotion. Civ. 14.7 (423.59–63); Verg. A. 6.733; Cic. Tusc. 4.6.11. Civ. 14.5 (420.15–18). Verg. A. 6.713–721. Civ. 14.3 (416.34–37). Civ. 14.5 (420.18–20); 9.4 (251.1–4). Cicero (Tusc. 4.11) says that Zeno’s definition of perturb-

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ful suffering or illness or strong emotion. Augustine argued that emotions are not only something we undergo, they are also “movements” (motus) of the soul, and they involve both wish and choice. Emotions arise from the weakness of the human condition. In Paradise, before the first humans turned away from God, there was nothing to fear, no unsatisfied wants, no losses to cause grief, and there was consistent joy.34 In our present condition, emotions may cause pain, but they are not necessarily diseases which afflict us, and they can be used for good. As always for Augustine, the important question is what you love, what you fear or desire, what makes you grieve or rejoice.35 His discussion of emotions starts from the contrast, in scripture, of “life according to the spirit” and “life according to the flesh”. He did not want his readers to think this was a contrast of incorporeal soul with body: in scripture “flesh” often means “living creature” or “human being”, so the contrast is between life according to what God wants, and life according to human concerns.36 In the course of this argument Augustine said that physical pain, like emotional pain, is experienced in the soul. The pains (dolores) which are said to be of the flesh are pains of the soul (anima) in the flesh and from the flesh. For what does the flesh by itself, without the soul, feel as pain or desire? When the flesh is said to feel desire or pain, either it is the human being, as I have explained, or it is some aspect of the soul which is affected by the experience (passio) of the flesh, either harsh so as to cause pain, or gentle so as to cause pleasure. The pain of the flesh is nothing other than a kind of offence to the soul arising from the flesh, and a sort of dissent from the experience of the flesh, just as the pain of the mind (animus) which is called sadness (tristitia) is dissent from those things which have happened to us though we did not want it. (Civ. 14.15 [438.52–61])37 It was not uncontroversial to say that some aspect of the soul is affected by the experience of the flesh. Nemesius of Emesa, another late fourth-century bishop with an interest in medicine, discussed in The Nature of Man opinions about

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atio, which Zeno calls pathos, is agitation, turned away from right reason, contrary to the nature of the soul (aversa a recta ratione contra naturam animi commotio). Civ. 14.10 (430.7–17). For detailed analysis of Civ. 14, Trettel (2018). Civ. 14.2 (415.13–33). In so far as there is a distinction, anima is the animating soul and animus the mind: O’Daly (1987), 7–8.

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the soul. He reported an argument of Cleanthes the Stoic: “nothing incorporeal shares affections with a body, nor any body with the incorporeal. Now the soul is affected with the body when the body is ill or cut, and body is affected with the soul, for when the soul is ashamed the body becomes red, and pale when it is afraid. Therefore the soul is a body.”38 Nemesius counter-argued that the soul might be the only incorporeal which is affected together with a body, and that there is no consensus that the soul is affected together with the body when the body is diseased or cut. “For it is debated whether the body alone is in pain when it receives the sensation from the soul, while the soul remains unaffected, or whether the soul is in pain together with the body. The former view prevails among the more highly reputed.”39 One candidate for “the more highly reputed” is the philosopher Porphyry, who said in On Abstinence that the soul has a pathêtikon, an aspect which deals with pathê, and who may have followed Plotinus in thinking that this pathêtikon transmits pathê to the body but is not itself affected.40 But Porphyry may not always have held this view. His opponents said he was inconsistent, and in an introductory work he offered a different explanation: experiencing (paschein) is different in incorporeals, because the experiences (pathê) of the soul are activities, not changes.41 This debate on whether and how the soul is affected provides context for Augustine’s understanding of physical pain as pain of the soul, and of emotional pain as arising from the soul. Augustine’s own view of the soul in relation to the body changed over time. He moved from sharing the Platonist view that human beings are souls yoked for a while to a mortal body, to insistence that human beings are a complex of body and soul, in this mortal life and in the resurrection.42 This helps to explain why he attends to emotional rather than to physical pain, and why he often describes emotional pain in the language of physical pain. The point is that for him, emotional and spiritual pain is more important than physical pain. There is a detailed description of emotional pain as Innocentius throws himself to the ground, pale with fear, his frantic pleas to God affecting Augustine so much that he is himself unable to pray.43 There is only a brief indication of the physical pain, both acute and chronic, which caused this fear. In the entire dossier of miraculous healings, only one emphasises physical pain: the case of the doctor who suffers from gout. The day before

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Van der Eijk & Sharples (2008), 58 (Morani 2.78–79). Ib. 59 (Morani 2.80). Porph. Abst. 1.33.1, with Clark (2000) 135 n.114; Plot. 3.6.5. Porph. Sent. 18. On his supposed inconsistency, see Eunapius, VPS iv. 18 (Goulet). Rist (1994) 92–104; Hunter (2012). Civ. 22.8 (817.110–818.119).

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his baptism, he dreams that demons forbid it, and when he does not obey them, they trample on his feet, causing “most acute (acerrimum) pain, such as he had never experienced”; but in his baptism both the pain, “by which he was tortured (cruciabatur) more than usual”, and the gout itself left him for good.44 In other cases, Augustine emphasises that the disease was incurable, or had distressing physical and mental effects for many years. The dossier ends with an account as long as that of Innocentius, in which Augustine narrates how he and his congregation responded to the healing of a brother and sister, on Easter Day at the shrine of St Stephen in their church at Hippo. They were two of ten siblings afflicted with a dreadful tremor which made them a public spectacle and had driven them from their city in Cappadocia. There is no detail about the illness.45 Confessions provides more examples of physical pain treated briefly and emotional pain treated at length. The unnamed friend who shared Augustine’s schooldays, and joined him in Manichaeism, “was struggling with fevers (laborabat febribus) and lay for a long time unconscious in a mortal sweat”. He was baptised while unconscious, and when he could speak again, rejected Augustine’s claim that the baptism was meaningless. A few days later the fever took hold again, and he died.46 Very little is said about the physical suffering of this friend, but there is a detailed account of the emotional suffering of Augustine. He experienced torment (supplicium, cruciatus), and only weeping was sweet to him. The wound was alleviated (lenitum) by time, but I was fevered (aestuabam), sighed, wept, was in turmoil; there was no rest and no counsel. I carried around my soul (anima, the animating soul) cut to bits (concisam) and bleeding; it did not want to be carried by me, and I found nowhere to lay it down. (Conf. 4.7.12.). Who is the “I” who carries the soul? The imagery reappears in Augustine’s account of how he suffered from sending away his long-term partner at the time when he planned to marry: she was “torn from my side, and my heart, to which she cleaved, was cut to pieces (concisum) and wounded, trailing blood”.47 He acquired another sexual partner, “but the wound made by that earlier excision (praecisio) was not healed, but after the inflammation ( fervor) and most acute

44 45 46 47

Civ. 22.8 (819.172–181). Petridou (this volume, 122, 130) on the extreme pain caused by gout. Civ. 22.8 (825.407–827.481). Conf. 4.3.7–7.12. 6.15.25.

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pain it putrefied (putrescabat), and the pain, so to speak, hurt with less heat but more despair (quasi frigidius sed desperatius)”.48 Latin putredo ranges over decay, sepsis, and ulceration. A second example of death by fever is Augustine’s mother Monnica.49 Hardly five days after they had shared a vision, she took to her bed with fever, and one day suffered a brief loss of consciousness. She told her sons to bury her anywhere, but wherever they were, to remember her at the altar of the Lord. “When she had expressed this thought in such words as she could manage, she fell silent and was tested (exercebatur) as the illness grew more serious.” Augustine said nothing more about this “testing”.50 He remembered words Monnica had said at another time, or that others had told him about; he did not report that she said anything more in her illness, only that she died on the ninth day. (Gregory of Nyssa, in contrast, represented his sister Macrina, also dying of fever, taking the lead in a long philosophical conversation with her brother.51) When Augustine’s unnamed friend died, he found no rest because his empty Manichaean beliefs gave no stable support; when Monnica died, he was a baptised Christian, and he knew that this was not a wretched death, nor was Monnica utterly dead, in soul as well as body.52 But “what was it that hurt (dolebat) so gravely within me, but the recent wound from the sudden rupture of our most sweet and loving way of living together? … My soul was gashed and, so to speak, torn in pieces (sauciabatur et quasi dilaniabatur)”.53 In discussion with his friends, he alleviated with the “poultice” ( fomentum) of truth the “torture” (cruciatus) which was known to God, not to them; but he was displeased with himself because events which are part of the human condition had so much power over him. He was distressed because he was distressed: “I felt pain for my pain with another pain, and was worn down by a double sadness” (alio dolore dolebam dolorem et duplici tristitia macerabar).54 Emotional pain reveals the state of the soul. Augustine, then, uses stark language about the physical pain inflicted by doctors who aim to heal, and applies that language to the salutary pain of divine healing. He describes emotional pain in the language of physical pain, with special reference to cutting, and he is much more precise about emotional pain

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

6.15.25. 9.11.27. Fever might bring delirium: Augustine refers to phreneticum febrientem, en. Psal. 98.5. Clark (2015) 158. Empty beliefs, Conf. 4.7.12; Monnica not wholly dead, 9.12.29. 9.12.30. 9.12.31.

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than about physical pain: he does not specify where exactly the physical pain is, whether it stabs or burns or throbs or aches, whether it is continuous, what makes it more or less intense.55 This does not mean that Augustine disregarded physical pain.56 It is central to his argument in Book 19 of City of God, where he uses physical and mental impairment to show that happiness is not to be found in this life, and that if virtue is happiness, as Stoic philosophers argued, virtue cannot be achieved by human effort alone: I wonder how Stoic philosophers have the face to argue that these are not evils. They admit that if these evils are so great that the wise person cannot or should not endure them, he is compelled by them to put himself to death and to depart from this life. So great is the stupid pride of these people who think they have the ultimate good here and become blessed by their own efforts, that even if their wise man (as they call him in their astonishing folly) becomes blind or deaf or dumb, is disabled in limbs and tortured by pain, afflicted by any evil which can be spoken or thought such that he is compelled to put himself to death—even so they are not ashamed to call this life, set in these evils, blessed.57 Augustine knew from Cicero what Stoics meant by “the first things in accordance with nature” (prima secundum naturam): they include soundness and preservation of all parts, health, unimpaired senses, freedom from pain, strength, beauty.58 He set out to show how pain and loss of tranquillity can undermine them all. “Amputation or debility of limbs destroys a man’s soundness, deformity his good looks, weakness his health, weariness his strength, lassitude or lethargy his mobility.” Harmonious physical movement is among the prima naturae; but “suppose some illness shakes his limbs with trembling? Suppose his spine is so curved that his hands are placed on the ground, making a human being into a kind of quadruped?” The “firstborn goods” (primigeneia bona) of the mind are sensation and understanding, which lead to apprehension and awareness of truth. But how much sensation is left in someone who becomes blind or deaf, “not to mention other things”? Where do reason and understanding go if illness makes someone insane? Phrenetici do senseless things contrary

55 56 57 58

Contrast the precise classification of Archigenes: Lewis (this volume, 151–152, table 7.1). Wolterstorff (2012) on Augustine’s view of human well-being. Civ. 19.4 (666.105–116). D.L.7.130 lists extreme pain, mutilation, and incurable illness as reasons for suicide. E.g. Cic. Fin. 5.17.46–47. Augustine probably did not know Seneca’s analysis of pain (Courtil, this volume, Ch. 5): for his very limited use of Seneca, O’Daly (2020), 282–283.

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to their good purpose and their character. What happens to understanding in cases of demonic possession, when a malign spirit makes use of soul and body as it wishes? In general, while we are in the flesh (that is, living this mortal embodied life), how much awareness of truth can we have? Augustine cites scripture: “the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the sense as it reflects on many things”.59 (This is not a contradiction of his argument in Book 14 that the corruptible soul weighs down the body: it was the primal sin of the soul which made the body corruptible.) The impulse to action (hormê) is one of the “first goods”, but it is also responsible for the actions of the insane. Virtue comes later, by teaching, but in the struggle for every virtue we are afflicted by weakness, disease, exhaustion, for which Augustine uses the vocabulary of physical illness: haec infirmitas, haec pestis, haec languor. As usual, he does not go into detail about physical pain; his focus is on impairment and the distress it produces in the sufferer and in those who see it. Physical pain disrupts this mortal life; it is also part of the eternal punishment Augustine envisages for those who have turned away from God. The two final books (21–22) of City of God deal with the ‘due ends’ of the two cities, that is, the two communities which together include all rational beings, angels as well as humans, in all times and places. The earthly city, also called the city of the devil, is the community of all who love themselves and want their own way; the heavenly city, also called the city of God, is the community of all who love God and want God’s way. Books 21–22 give extensive consideration to bodies after death, because Augustine is committed, on the evidence of scripture, to belief in the resurrection of the body and its reunion with the soul in eternal torment or eternal blessedness. He deals with the earthly city first, because “it seems more incredible that bodies endure in eternal torments than that they continue, without any pain at all, in eternal blessedness”.60 He argues that pain can occur only in a living thing; it does not always kill, but extreme pain makes the soul depart, because the structure (compago) of limbs and vital parts is too weak to endure the force of great or extreme pain. But just as the soul now suffers pain but does not die, so in the afterlife the body will suffer pain and will not die, and the soul will be unable to leave the body or to escape bodily pain.61 Augustine reiterates his claim that it is the soul, not the body, which feels pain. Once again, there is no detail on the pain which is caused by burning in eternal fire; perhaps it is indescribable. 59 60 61

Book of Wisdom 9:15. Civ. 21.1 (758.7–10). Civ. 21.3 (760.13–21).

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In Paradise there was no pain, because “there was no corruption in the body or from the body to inflict any distress on any senses; no fear of disease within or assault from without”.62 In heaven there is no pain, and in the resurrection body all defects are corrected.63 Pain is one of the evils of this human life. Why does this evil happen? Augustine always insists that there is no independent evil power. Evil is the name we give to the losing of good, so evil cannot exist independently of good: when good is wholly lost, there is nothing.64 In a short work against the Manichaeans, who held that there is an evil power equivalent to God, Augustine applied this principle to pain. Many people think, he said, that pain is especially evil; but even pain can exist only in natures which are good. Pain is the resistance of something, in soul or body, which does not want to stop being what it was: and it was something good, because God made it. So evils without pain are worse. It is worse to feel joy from wickedness than to feel pain from corruption; in the body a wound with pain is better than “putrefaction” (putredo) without pain; and when there is nothing left to be corrupted, there is no putrefaction.65 Even the physical pain of non-rational animals is resistance to the corruption and destruction of the organism.66 In City of God Augustine gives a longer exposition of this principle: There can be life without pain, but there cannot be pain without some kind of life … There is a nature in which there is no evil, or even in which there can be no evil; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good … God does not take away all he gave to nature, but removes something and leaves something, so that there should be something which feels pain for what he has removed. The pain itself is a testimony to the good removed and the good left; for unless good were left, it could not grieve for the good lost.67 Augustine’s interpretation—pain as testimony to good—contrasts with the conventional observation that pain is a warning signal. Nemesius, for example, says that humans need food and drink, clothes and housing, and medical care because our bodies are sensitive and are not always in balance. If we did not have sensation, we would not have pain, which is a sign of change; and then

62 63 64 65 66 67

Civ. 14.26 (449.5–8). Civ. 22.19 (838.32–38). Williams (2000). Nat. Bon. 20. de Gen. litt. 3.16.25. Civ. 19.13 (679.33–680.43).

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we would not ask for medical treatment, and would die.68 What interpretation of pain was offered to Innocentius by the spiritual advisers who visited him every evening, prayed with him, and agreed to be with him for the operation? Did they do as Augustine does in the first book of City of God, attempting to give reasons for the suffering of this devout Christian, suggesting that his pain is correction or education, or even observing that everyone must die and that illness delivers us from the evils of this life?69 Augustine says only “They [the holy men] consoled him and exhorted him to trust in God and to bear God’s will like a man (viriliter)”. The bishop gives the blessing and the holy men leave; Innocentius asks them to be there in the morning; they exhort him to keep calm (aequo animo).70 Perhaps Augustine summarised the consolation, just as he summarised the pain, in order to focus on the emotional distress. All that the holy men say could be expanded into traditional exhortations to be a man; assurances that all that happens is God’s will, and Innocentius must trust in God; and perhaps, in the use of the word poenae, an implication that suffering is penal, that poenae are not just the painful consequences of surgery but the result of inherited or individual sin. Augustine did not write a treatise on pain, and as usually happens in work on Augustine, ideas have to be gathered from different works and different contexts. But he used some ideas in several contexts, and there are some things he always said about suffering. Everything, even demonic assault, happens by the will or the permission of God; how then, he asked a friend, could it be otherwise than well with him, even though he was afflicted with problems of the rectum? He would be at fault if he did not accept what God wants.71 Suffering is punishment for bad people, spiritual training for good people. Tribulation is threshing with the tribula, a board studded with sharp stones, which separates grain from chaff. Augustine also used the biblical image of the refiner’s fire, which burns up chaff but refines gold, though he seems not to understand the process. He preferred an image better known in Africa, a region which produced and exported the olive oil which was both a staple food and a fuel for lighting: the pressure of the olive-press produces exhausted black lees, but also pure gold oil.72 None of us can claim that we do not deserve to suffer, whether for individual sin or for the sin inherited by the entire human race from its first ancestors. If you are not aware that you have done or thought something wrong,

68 69 70 71 72

Van der Eijk & Sharples (2008), 44 (Morani p. 9. 1.51–52). Civ. 1.10 (12.97–98). Civ. 22.8 (817.97–818.122). Ep. 38.1. Poque (1984), 1.157–170.

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suffering may be an alert to something you have left undone, or a wake-up call to avoid complacency. In the first book of City of God, for example, Augustine had to counter the accusation that the God of the Christians had not protected chaste women from rape: virgins, widows, faithful married women, even consecrated women. He insisted that chastity is a virtue of the mind, not of the body, so women who had not consented, but had maintained their commitment to chastity, had kept their integrity. But they should ask themselves, he said, whether they had become proud of their chastity, and had basked in admiration, even to the point of not wanting other women to share their status. He did not claim to know what their hearts would answer. But if there were women who could truthfully answer No, and yet had suffered rape, it is possible that without this humiliation, they would have become proud.73 Pain is penal both as a general consequence of humanity turning away from God, and as a specific penalty or warning. But Augustine did not suggest that we should seek pain, or inflict pain on ourselves, as a punishment for sin. In Christian Teaching he offered reflections on appropriate love for the body. Some people, he said, appear to persecute the body by “self-restraint” (continentia) and effort. They do this in the right way if it is a kind of military training, which aims to bring the body under control and to eliminate inclinations of the soul which make bad use of the body; they do not kill themselves, and they take care of their health.74 Many people voluntarily accept pain, or loss of limbs, for the sake of something they love more.75 That could apply to undergoing surgery, or to accepting martyrdom in time of persecution, or to providing in everyday life another kind of witness to Christian faith: in a sermon, Augustine described the martyr who endures critical illness rather than accept an amulet which implied a pact with demons.76 When Augustine preached on the feast-days of martyrs, he did not dwell on their physical suffering, or claim that they were spiritually absent from their pain.77 He emphasised their courage and faith, which any Christian could imitate; and that included Innocentius.

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Civ. 1.28 (29.19–37). Clark (2005) on training and health. Doct. chr. 1.48–55 (1.24.24–25.26). Serm. 335D.3; on amulets, Doct. chr. 2.75 (2.20.30). Martin (2011). Contrast Ignatius (McMeekin, this volume, 232–234) and Prudentius (Clarke, this volume, 218, 220–221).

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References Editions and Translations Augustine. (1892) De natura boni. J. Zycha (ed.), Sancti Aureli Augustini opera. (CSEL 25.2). Prague, Vienna: F. Tempsky; Leipzig: G. Freytag. Augustine. (1894) De Genesi ad litteram. J. Zycha (ed.), Sancti Aureli Augustini opera. (CSEL 28.1). Prague, Vienna: F. Tempsky; Leipzig: G. Freytag. Augustine. (1955) De civitate Dei. B. Dombart & A. Kalb (eds), De civitate dei. Libri i–x (CCSL 47) and Libri xi–xxii (CCSL 48). Turnhout: Brepols. Augustine. (1981) Confessiones. L. Verheijen (ed.), Confessionum libri xiii. (CCSL 27). Turnhout: Brepols. Augustine. (1995) De doctrina Christiana. R.P.H. Green (ed.), Augustine: De doctrina Christiana. (Oxford Early Christian Texts). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eunapius. (2014) Lives of Philosophers and Sophists. From R. Goulet (ed. & transl.), Eunape de Sardes. Vies de Philosophes et de Sophistes. Les Belles Lettres, Éditions Budé, Paris. Nemesius. (1987) De natura hominis. M. Morani (ed.), Nemesii Emeseni De natura hominis. Leipzig: Teubner. Nemesius. (2008) De natura hominis. P. van der Eijk & R. Sharples (transl.), Nemesius: On the Nature of Man. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Modern Scholarship Arbesmann, R. (1954) ‘The concept of Christus Medicus in Saint Augustine’, Traditio 10: 1–28. Burton, P. (2007) Language in the Confessions of Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byers, S. (2012) Perception, Sensibility and Moral Motivation in Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, G. (2000) Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals. London: Duckworth [Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, now Bloomsbury]. Clark, G. (2005) ‘The Health of the Spiritual Athlete’, in H. King (ed.), Health in Antiquity. Abingdon: Routledge. Clark, G. (2006) ‘Desires of the Hangman: Augustine on Legitimized Violence’, in H.A. Drake (ed.), Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 137–146. Clark, G. (2015) Monica: An Ordinary Saint. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Humfress, C. (2007) Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunter, D. (2012), ‘Augustine on the Body’, in M. Vessey (ed.), A Companion to Augustine. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 353–364.

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Jackson, R. (1988) Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire. London: British Museum Publications. Jones, A. (1964) The Later Roman Empire 284–602. 3 vols. Oxford: Blackwell. Langslow, D. (2000) Medical Latin in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, E. (2011) ‘Commemoration, Representation, and Interpretation: Augustine of Hippo’s Depictions of the Martyrs’, in P. Clarke & T. Claydon (eds), Saints and Sanctity. (Studies in Church History 47). Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, pp. 29–40. Mayer, W. (2018) ‘Medicine and Metaphor in Late Antiquity: how some recent shifts are changing the field’, Studies in Late Antiquity 2 (4): 440–463. McLynn, N. (1994) Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. Berkeley: University of California Press. O’Daly, G. (1987) Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Daly, G. (2020) Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O’Donnell, J. (1992) Augustine: Confessions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poque, S. (1984) Le langage symbolique dans la prédication d’Augustin d’Hippone: images héroiques. 2 vols. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes. Rist, J. (1994). Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trettel, A. (2018). Desires in Paradise: an Interpretative Study of Augustine City of God 14. Leiden: Brill. Van Nuffelen, P. (2012) Orosius and the Rhetoric of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Webb, R. (2009) Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Williams, R. (2000) ‘Insubstantial evil’, in R. Dodaro & G. Lawless (eds), Augustine and his Critics, London: Routledge, pp. 105–123. Wolterstorff, N. (2012) ‘Augustine’s rejection of eudaimonism’, in J. Wetzel (ed.) Augustine’s City of God: a critical guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 149–166.

chapter 12

Affective Lexica between Hellenistic Philosophy and Christian Theology Jonathan Zecher

[T]he other form of representation suggests infinity almost physically, because in fact it does not end … We shall call this representative mode the list, or catalogue. umberto eco1

… Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure. t.s. eliot2

∵ 1

Introduction

Between 2000 and 2003, Croatian artist Mladen Stilinovic (1947–2016) painstakingly whited out the definitions of each word in the dictionary and replaced each one with the word “PAIN”. The result, “Dictionary—Pain,” presents the viewer with language’s dissolution into pain. “Abstention: PAIN”, “Account: PAIN”, and so on. When displayed fully, each page framed and set in order on the wall, the viewer follows a path through what had once been the English language, set out and defined in neat alphabetical order. What remains is the only reality to which all language points, without ever altering it through articulation or giving form to its experience: PAIN. For Stilinovic this is the truth of things, residing just beneath the veneer of communication: “When I say pain,

1 Eco (2009), 17 (emphasis original). 2 Eliot (1974), 190: Four Quartets: “East Coker”, v, lines 3–4.

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questions are immediately raised: what pain, whose pain, wherefrom the pain, as if pain had to be explained, analysed. There’s nothing to be explained … the pain is there.”3 Stilinovic attacked in his art the very notion of describing, let alone narrating, pain. Pain is real, to be sure, it “is there,” but language, even selfhood and subjectivity, dissolve in it. Stilinovic wanted to show viewers that pain’s absolute reality annihilates meaning, and that any attempt at creating meaning ultimately ends in PAIN. A couple of millennia before Mladen Stilinovic created “Dictionary—PAIN”, Hellenistic philosophers and later schoolmen were fashioning their own affective lexica to articulate the experience of pain (λύπη). They laboured not under the presumption that language dissolves in pain but on the more optimistic assumption that language expresses reality and, therefore, that pain can even be set in some sort of order through language. They made what we might call ‘passion-lists’. Originating among Stoics, these lists present four generic or primary passions (ἐπιθυμία, ἡδονή, φόβος, λύπη) and then the multifarious forms (εἴδη) of each. Every form of λύπη, every word in the list, is λύπη. They are not “like” pain or “related to” distress; rather each is pain—but pain refracted in some way: Δυσθυμία δὲ λύπη … Συμφορὰ δὲ λύπη … Ἄχθος δὲ λύπη … Ἄχος δὲ λύπη … Σφακελισμὸς δὲ λύπη … Πένθος δὲ λύπη … Discouragement is pain … Misfortune is pain … Depression is pain … Distress is pain … Spasming is pain … Grief is pain … (Ps.-A., Aff. 1.2)4 And so on. But in opposite fashion to Stilinovic, each of these terms is then defined: Δυσθυμία δὲ λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλύτῳ ἢ δυσκινήτῳ. Συμφορὰ δὲ λύπη ἐπὶ συμπεφραγμένοις κακοῖς. Ἄχθος δὲ λύπη βαρύνουσα. Ἄχος δὲ λύπη ἀφωνίαν ἐμποιοῦσα. Σφακελισμὸς δὲ λύπη σφοδρά. Πένθος δὲ λύπη ἐπὶ ἀώρῳ τελευτῇ. Discouragement is pain at an obstacle or irresoluble problem. Misfortune is pain at close-packed sufferings. Depression is pain that weighs you down. Distress is pain that renders you speechless. Spasming is sharp pain. Grief is pain at an untimely death. (Ps-A., Aff. 1.2)5 3 Stilinovic (1994). 4 Kruettner (1884), 14.1–6. 5 Kruettner (1884), 14.1–6.

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Each form on the list is λύπη, yes, but “at” some cause; or λύπη that “does” or “feels” in some way. Every entry refracts pain either through sensation or social circumstance and, taken together, constellate a range of experiences that encompass psychological and somatic pain. Taken together, these lists form affective lexica building up a language by which the experience of pain can be articulated, communicated, and narrativized.6 Passions, pain, and their management were topics of great concern to early Stoics, Zeno of Citium ( fl. c. 300bce), his successor Cleanthes (d. 230bce), and especially the next head of the Stoic school, Chrysippus (c. 279–200bce). Beginning in the last century bce these philosophers’ works were epitomized by schoolmen like Arius Didymus (d. 10 bce) and others, sometimes passing under the names of philosophers of other schools, like the Peripatetic Andronicus of Rhodes ( fl. 1st c. bce). Other doxographers, Diogenes Laertius (3rd c. ce) and John Stobaeus (5th c. ce), copied or drew upon these epitomes in giving the opinions of various philosophers. ‘Passion-lists’, which provide the textual focus for this essay, were central to these epitomes, and provide rich but frequently overlooked reflections on pain and distress among philosophers of various schools into late antiquity. Moreover, Christian writers both composed their own passion-lists (especially in monastic contexts) and frequently copied versions of those under discussion here. In what follows, after an initial introduction to the passion-lists, I will analyse the definitions and terminology of pain in them, arguing that the former locate pain socially and somatically, while the latter echo and imply emotional scripts for pain’s expression and management. The lists comprise affective lexica bound to shared educational culture (around classic texts like the Iliad or Aeneid) and social norms (like citizenship and status in the Roman world). In the final section, I turn to Christian versions of the lists to show how the form and language remains constant while some pain, at least, is re-evaluated and contextualised within Christian theological and cosmological assumptions at odds with the broader Greco-Roman culture. The argument throughout is that lists provided language to pain, which could be altered, developed, and mobilised in narrative and other contexts.

6 Nussbaum (2001), 147–150.

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The Possibility of Communication

Before coming to the lists, though, I think it is worth stepping back a bit to consider the theoretical challenges posed by Stilinovic’s art and Elaine Scarry’s classic work on pain, as well as key distinctions with antiquity that suggest a different line of approach. Stilinovic’s “Dictionary—PAIN” forces viewers to walk (quite literally) through Elaine Scarry’s famous, widely influential thesis that pain is incommunicable.7 She argues that pain constitutes the sufferer’s absolute reality, into which others cannot enter, however much and creatively they may attempt to do so. In part this is because pain—especially chronic or terrible pain as is inflicted in torture—“does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language.”8 Scarry’s thesis rests, however, on at least two indefensible dichotomies: first, between mind and body; second, between self and other. For Scarry, physical pain is antithetical to psychological pain, partly in its lack of referent and partly in its demolition of discourse.9 Likewise, as Javier Moscoso has noted, Scarry writes at a time when “other minds” exercised philosophers of mind a great deal. That there is distinction between self and other is hardly in doubt; that these are exclusive is much more questionable. Indeed, Moscoso argues, while Scarry presumes that our “interior states” are locked away from others, language is always in the business of opening those supposedly locked doors. Put differently, language does not merely express but actually conditions experience of pain.10 Pain may be a particularly tricky lock on one’s interior but it is possible, nevertheless, to communicate this to others and for them to enter imaginatively in. Moscoso goes on to argue shared cultural forms enable and constrain the performance and, with it, experience of pain.11 Moscoso’s claim is compelling, and especially so if the first dichotomy—between mental and physical pain—is rejected as well as the second, between minds. In antiquity, the mind/body dichotomy is generally rejected, and physical pain was not clearly distinguished from psychological distress. The same word—λύπη—covered both valences. When Plato pairs λύπη with ἡδονή in the Demiourge’s formation of humans, or Aristotle names these the primary pas-

7 8 9 10

11

Scarry (1985). Scarry (1985), 4. Scarry (1985), 33–34. Moscoso (2012), 4. Moscoso cites Wittgenstein at this point (Philosophische Untersuchungen, §384): “You learned the expression ‘pain’ along with language” (“Den Begriff ‘Schmerz’ hast du mit der Sprache gelernt”) (Wittgenstein & Anscombe [2001], 100). Moscoso (2012), 6–7.

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sions, they make no distinction about where or how pain or pleasure are felt.12 When Evagrios of Pontus includes λύπη as one of the “eight wicked thoughts,” he has in mind something closer to deep sadness or depression, a valence he surely learned from the Apostle Paul (2Cor. 7:9–10).13 With the possible exception of Plotinian Neoplatonists, ancient sources, philosophical and otherwise, poorly maintain distinctions between the experiences of soul (or, mind) and body and, in fact, generally presume upon their mutual inter-affectivity: anger is heated blood around the heart and a thought of revenge. Is that happening in the body or the soul? Yes. Λύπη is “an irrational drawing-back”14—of the soul? of blood into the heart?15 Again, yes. So then, is λύπη distress (an emotion), or pain (something bodily)? Once more, yes.16 As with the other passions—pleasure, desire, and fear—pain is at once somatic and psychical. One need not be a Stoic to admit that λύπη and the other passions can have intentional objects, if not fully-formed propositional content.17 Conversely, an opponent of Stoic monistic psychology as vitriolic as Galen could agree that anger and distress are felt in the breast.18 Broadly speaking, passions like λύπη are, as Aristotle said, “common to soul and body.”19 Taken thus, as both sensation and emotion, λύπη does not evade the challenges to linguistic expression laid out so forcefully by Scarry, but—and for the same reasons—neither is it outside the cultural matrix of scripts, performances, and metaphors that both enable and constrain the practice of emotions. The passion-lists were instrumental in crafting language and developing scripts for the articulation, performance and, ultimately, communication, of pain. 12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19

Pl. Ti. 69d: “… First pleasure, the greatest enticement to evil; then pains, which flee from good things …” (πρῶτον μὲν ἡδονήν, μέγιστον κακοῦ δέλεαρ, ἔπειτα λύπας, ἀγαθῶν φυγάς …) (cf. 86b). Arist. EN. 7.11.1–9 (1152b1–1154a36). Cf., Rh. 2.1.8 (1378a19–22): “The passions are those things that pain and pleasure accompany, because of which people, being affected, come to different judgements” (Ἕστι δὲ τὰ πάθη δι’ ὅσα μεταβάλλοντες διαφέρουσι πρὸς τὰς κρίσεις οἷς ἕπεται λύπη καὶ ἡδονή). See, e.g., Praktikos 10 (Guillaumont & Guillaumont [1971], 514) or De octo spiritibus malitiae 5 (Migne, PG 79, 1156B–C): “Sadness is a worm in the heart that consumes the mother that gave it birth” (Σκώληξ ἐστὶ καρδίας λύπη, καὶ κατεσθίει τὴν τεκοῦσαν μητέρα). Ps-A. Aff. 1.1; Ar. Did. de Phil. sect. 74.2.19–20; D.L. 7.111 = SVF 3.412. Gal. Caus. Symp. 2.5.11 (7.192–194K). For physical pain, one might expect πόνος, ἀλγηδών (later, ἀλγή), or ὁδυνή. We shall see, however, that these can as easily refer to ‘mental’ as much as ‘physical’ pain. The distinction is simply not very strong or consistent in antiquity. For a recent and nuanced exploration of the affective and cognitive dimensions of physical pain in antiquity, see King (2018), 21–26. Aspasius, In ethica Nichomachea commentaria 45.1–9 (Heylbut). Gal. PHP 6.8.77 (CMG v.4.1.2, p. 424 De Lacy). Arist. de Sens. 1 (436a8–10).

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In what follows, I leave λύπη untranslated because I want to let the lists explain what it means. Not only do I think it unduly limited by any one English word, I think it unduly limited by any single Greek one. Λύπη is an “irrational drawing-back” and Stoics add a suppositional dimension: “Its cause is the fresh opinion that an evil is present, at which it is proper to contract” (αἴτιον δ’ αὐτῆς τὸ δοξάζειν πρόσφατον κακὸν παρεῖναι, ἐφ’ ᾧ καθήκει συστέλλεσθαι).20 But what is this “drawing-back”? What does it feel like, how is it recognised, what kinds of “present evils” cause or accompany it? No explanation is forthcoming. Or, rather, the explanation is given by the concatenation of λύπη’s forms. Pain is to be measured in and through the sensations and circumstances constellated linguistically around it.

3

A Short Field Guide to Passion-Lists

Passion-lists were quite popular among ancient doxographers and likely used in schoolroom settings; they have been less interesting to modern commentators.21 This should not surprise us, given that the lists do not seek to explain the soul, and the extant ones are hardly the work of first-rate philosophers; some, indeed, pass pseudonymously under the names of schoolmen like Andronicus of Rhodes. Lists would seem to be the acme of scholastic, systematising tendencies, a colourless suburban cul-de-sac far from the bustling hub of physical and ethical philosophy. And yet, as in the line from Umberto Eco quoted above, lists tantalise us with the possibility of reducing infinity to order. Lists play on the frontiers between known order and the unknowable infinite. The existence of a list is predicated on inclusion and exclusion, on concatenation and ordering and yet the possibly endless addition of entries suggests an endless task

20 21

Ar. Did. de Phil. sect. 74.2.20–22; Ps-A. Aff. 1.1; Cic. Tusc. 4.6.14, 4.7.14. See also Clem. Al. Paed. 1.13.101.1. Witness the scant attention given in the most important monographs on ancient psychologies of passions: Pigeaud (1981) does not discuss the lists at all; Sorabji (2002), 30, 48, 133–136, is perceptive but brief in his remarks; Nussbaum (2001), 107–108, 163–164, is aware but basically uninterested in the lists. Simo Knuuttila and Juha Sihvola refer to but do not study the lists in “How the Philosophical Analysis of the Emotions was Introduced”, Knuuttila & Sihvola (1998), 1–21, at 14–15. All scholars cited above are well aware of texts attributed to Andronicus, Arius Didymus, as well as those by Diogenes Laertius and other doxographers, but their focus is—quite understandably—on the psychology of emotional arousal and therapy that lies behind but is not necessarily expected in the various species of passions. In contrast, Kaster (2005) uses taxonomies extensively and creatively to explore lived experiences of emotion, though he focuses on narratives rather than lists.

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of exploring, and reporting.22 Far from a boring cul-de-sac of philosophy, lists map the territory we know and show the points of entry into that which we do not. For precisely these reasons, lists, in the form of encyclopedias, have proven a fruitful site of inquiry for historians of emotion working in early modernity and the enlightenment. Ute Frevert has led this study in “historical semantics” of emotions, relying on lexical and dictionary definitions of “the generic and collective concepts of the many individual words related to emotions.”23 Frevert argues that, through attention to definitions and collocations of emotional semantics, it is possible to “investigate concepts of feeling and emotion” and to “follow processes of transfer and adoption.”24 Frevert has in mind emerging European nations and their cultures, but historical semantics has application also in antiquity and late antiquity, during which passion-lists occupied a similar (albeit far more limited) taxonomical role in emotional vocabulary. To understand the vocabulary, the naming, of emotion—and of pain—takes us a long way toward understanding how it was experienced and narrativized.25 In the case of passion-lists, the frontier to be navigated lies between mundane experience of pain and the philosophical underpinnings of emotional experience. The four “primary” passions are φόβος, ἐπιθυμία, λύπη, and ἡδονή (or, in Cicero’s rendering, metus, libido, aegritudo, and laetitia): fear, desire, distress/pain, and pleasure. The first two are felt at the prospect of perceived evil or good, the latter two at the presence of perceived evil or good. Aristotle and Peripatetics might limit the primary passions to λύπη and ἡδονή,26 while Plato in the Timaeus lists ἡδονή, λύπη, θάρρος, φόβος, θυμός, and ἔλπις.27 By and large, however, even Peripatetics and later Platonist thinkers could accept the four primary passions. These define the orthogonal axes of a plane of emotional arousal: good/bad, certain/uncertain.28 The lists do not dwell on the 22 23 24 25

26

27 28

Such is Umberto Eco’s argument throughout Eco (2009). Frevert (2014), 1–31, at 10. See also Frevert (2011). Frevert (2014), 9. William F. Reddy argued this strongly in The Navigation of Feeling, with his concept of “emotives”—words and expressions that at once name and perform an emotion, see Reddy (2001). Monique Scheer has developed a related account of emotion using Bourdieu’s idea of habitus as the basis for a linguistic-somatic synthesis, see Scheer (2012), 193–220 and (2014), 32–61. Arist. EN 7.11.1–9 (1152b1–1154a36); elsewhere he affirms only that ἡδονή and λύπη accompany all emotions, see Rhet. 2.1.8 (1378a19–22). On λύπη in Aristotle, see also Cheng (present volume). Ti. 69d: “… πρῶτον μὲν ἡδονήν, μέγιστον κακοῦ δέλεαρ, ἔπειτα λύπας, ἀγαθῶν φυγάς, ἔτι δ’ αὖ θάρρος καὶ φόβον, ἄφρονε συμβούλω, θυμὸν δὲ δυσπαραμύθητον, ἐλπίδα δ’ εὐπαράγωγον.” These axes are well recognized among scholars, although they are more commonly labelled “present” and “future”: Knuuttila (2004), 52; Nussbaum (2001), 160, 177; Sorabji

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primary passions or their much-disputed mechanisms of arousal (so interesting to philosophers like Richard Sorabji and Martha Nussbaum). Instead, they offer up a variety of forms for each. Margaret Graver therefore argues that in lists “the broad-brush classification by genus could be made fine-grained enough to capture the nuances of everyday emotional experience.”29 This is best accomplished, she continues, by everyday language, such as found in lists, and so their “arrangement thus serves as a kind of interface between top-down and bottom-up approaches to emotion.”30 As the lists provide an interface between theoretical reflection and lived experiences, they not only organise emotional phenomena but also provide language for expressing and relating those phenomena to sensations, circumstances, and causes. Let us start with where these lists are found. They are generally embedded in doxographies, commentaries, or other treatises. Most of them are Stoic in origin, though at times passed through Peripatetic or Platonic filters, and it is easy enough to discern a shared genetic pattern in them. Far the longest such list is in the De passionibus attributed falsely to the Peripatetic philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes (fl. mid-1st c. bce).31 Dependent on this list or a common ancestor, the next is attributed—perhaps correctly—to Arius Didymus (1st c. bce/ce), in the work De philosophorum sectis liber.32 From the latter Diogenes Laertius took his list.33 The Ars Rhetorica Politica (the so-called Anonymous Seguerianus) includes a truncated version, as do lexicographical texts like the Suda, from late antiquity into the Byzantine period.34 Cicero offers a list in Latin based, in all likelihood, on Arius’.35 There were other Latin lists, now lost, such as Varro’s.36 In later centuries, the lists are cut apart and parts (the forms of λύπη, for example, or the definition of ἄχος) embedded in etymological, grammatical, and theological-anthropological treatises. The latter include Nemesius of Emesa’s De natura hominis and John Damascene’s Exposi-

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

(2002), 29–30. It seems to me that time is only one possible mode of uncertainty or prospectivity allowed for by the generic divisions. Graver (2007), 57. Graver (2007), 57. Aff. 1.2–1.5 (Kreuttner [1884], 12.7–20.2). Ar. Did. de Phil. sect. 74.2.24–75.2.10 (Mullach [1867]) (= Stobaeus 2.7.10b–c = SVF 3.395, 3.408, 3.413, 3.402). D.L. 7.111–114 (= SVF 3.412, 3.407, 3.396, 3.400). Anonymous Seguerianus, Ars rhetorica politica 225–228 (Dilts & Kennedy [1997]), 62.19– 63.5; Suda, s.v., Λ.843, Φ.559, E.2341, Η.97. Tusc. 4.7.16–4.9.22. See, however, Erskine (1997), 39–45. Servius, Ad Aeneidos commentarii, 6.733: “Varro and all the philosophers …” (Varro et omnes philosophi …) (Thilo & Hagen [1884], 103.10–17). Servius’ terms for the four primary passions differ considerably from Cicero’s.

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tio Fidei Orthodoxae.37 They would be translated into Latin, quoted by Aquinas, and ultimately brought back into Byzantium in its twilight years. Passion-lists wind their way through the doxographical and pedagogical literature of sixteen centuries of Greek and Latin cultures. While embedded in different kinds of texts, the lists share a common genus/species structure, which places great emphasis on the latter. While philosophers spent a good deal of time arguing over the mechanisms underpinning generic passions, lists do not dwell on psychological niceties, instead using the axes of emotional arousal to populate a whole field of emotional states. For each primary passion, a number of species (εἴδη, partes) are introduced, with definitions for each. Lists inevitably have two parts. The first merely concatenates emotional or somatic states after their primary passion: … ὑπὸ δὲ λύπην φθόνος, ζῆλος, ζηλοτυπία, ἔλεος, πένθος, ἄχθος, ἄχος, ἀνία, ὀδύνη, ἄση. Under pain fall malice, envy, rivalry, pity, grief, depression, distress, folly, agony, and loathing. (Ar. Did. de Phil. sect. 74.1.3–5)38 … ut aegritudini invidentia … aemulatio, obtrectatio, misericordia, angor, luctus, maeror, aerumna, dolor, lamentatio, sollicitudo, molestia, adflictatio, desperatio et si quae sunt de genere eodem. To pain belong malice … envy, rivalry, pity, anguish, mourning, lamentation, affliction, anguish, lamentation, anxiety, annoyance, affliction, desperation, and whatever else concerns this same category. (Cic. Tusc. 4.7.16)39 Ps-Andronicus simply says “Twenty-five forms of pain” (Εἴδη λύπης κεʹ) and then rattles off a list. With their rhythms and alliteration, these were surely meant to be recited and easily recalled. Their context is likely the classroom, and learning the passion-list would feed the moral formation of growing citizens, whether or not they pursued rhetoric and philosophy later. The next part of each list goes back through the terms, appending definitions to each. A few examples from Ps-Andronicus are fairly representative of the form:

37 38 39

I will discuss them further below. Mullach (1867). LCL 141, pp. 344–345.

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εʹ Δυσθυμία δὲ λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλύτῳ ἢ δυσκινήτῳ. ϛʹ Συμφορὰ δὲ λύπη ἐπὶ συμπεφραγμένοις κακοῖς. ζʹ Ἄχθος δὲ λύπη βαρύνουσα. 5. Discouragement is pain at an obstacle or irresoluble problem. 6. Misfortune is pain at close-packed sufferings. 7. Depression is pain that weighs one down. (Aff. 1.2)40 Each species is simply λύπη in certain conditions or which feels a certain way. Does λύπη feel heavy? Then it is called ἄχθος. Is it roused by an apparently immovable obstacle or insoluble problem? That is called δυσθυμία. And so on. I would note at this point that none of these forms are suggested to be exclusive of the others. One’s pain could be at once ἄχθος and δυσθυμία and πένθος, and so on. Each species connects the primary passion to lived experience, whether phenomenologically or causally, but each species must be understood as a manifestation rather than, say, an effect, of the primary passion. The lists simply catalogue what it means to encounter the primary passions in the wild, as it were. Although they share a common structure, the lists vary greatly in length, and this in two ways. First, there is no set number of species for each primary passion. Ps-Andronicus, for example, lists twenty-forms of λύπη, thirteen for φόβος, twenty-six for ἐπιθυμία (of which six concern anger), and only five for ἡδονή. Second, numbers vary greatly between different lists. As opposed to Ps-Andronicus’ twenty-five forms of λύπη, Arius Didymus lists ten, Diogenes Laertius nine, Cicero fourteen, and so on. One does not get the sense of schematic or contrived order among the lists. Rather, they seem to concatenate found terms and present them in a mnemonically useful manner. Their variety may even expect users to add and amend as appropriate—a memory engine not only for storing useful information but for adding to it and utilising it creatively. Moreover, despite their Stoic origin, the lists do not entail any commitment to that school or its monistic psychology. Their more general utility is clear from their circulating (in various forms) through rhetorical, lexicographical, medical and religious literature in later centuries, long after Stoicism had died out as a school and among thinkers who would not count themselves adherents of its doctrines. The strength of these lists lies in their memorability and flexibility: they are easy to learn, easy to use, and good to think with.

40

Kreuttner (1884), 14.1–3.

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In the next two sections I want to drill down into the terms and definitions to show that thinking with these lists means generating language for expressing and, ultimately, narrativizing, pain.

4

Where Does It Hurt?

Let us look first at the definitions given for λύπη’s various species. These fall into two categories: “λύπη at something” and “λύπη that does something”. The former describes the conditions and causes according to which a person might experience λύπη and the latter describes what it feels like. Looking first at causal definitions, we have already encountered discouragement (δυσθυμία) at irresoluble or intractable problems. Other forms locate λύπη in social relationships: α’ Ἔλεος μὲν οὖν ἐστι λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς ἀναξίως πάσχοντος ἐκείνου. κεʹ Οἶκτος δὲ λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς. 1. Pity, then, is pain at others’ sufferings, which they suffer without deserving it. 25. Sympathy is pain at others’ sufferings. (Ps-A. Aff. 1.2)41 Both of these words—ἔλεος and οἶκτος—would be rendered in English as “sympathy” or “pity”.42 However, ἔλεος differs from οἶκτος in the perception of whether another’s suffering was or was not deserved. Ἔλεος is more limited, requiring a belief that sufferings are undeserved, whereas οἶκτος does not.43 Both emotional states rest on a sense of solidarity with others and are inflected through ideas of justice and desert. Other forms of λύπη rest on competition and the agonism endemic to Hellenistic culture: βʹ Φθόνος δὲ λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις ἀγαθοῖς· ἢ λύπη ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν ἐπιεικῶν εὐπραγίᾳ. γʹ Ζῆλος δὲ λύπη ἐπὶ τῷ ἕτερον τυγχάνειν, ὧν αὐτὸς ἐπιθυμεῖ. ἢ λύπη ἐπὶ τῷ ἄλλοις ὑπάρχειν, ἡμῖν δὲ μή. δʹ Ζηλοτυπία δὲ λύπη ἐπὶ τῷ ἄλλοις ὑπάρχειν ἃ καὶ ἡμῖν ὑπάρχει. 41 42 43

Kreuttner (1884), 12.12–13 and 15.9. LSJ, s.v. ἔλεος and οἶκτος. The definition likely came into Stoic thought from Arist. Rhet. 2.8.2. On the topic more generally, see Konstan (2001), especially 49–74.

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2. Malice is pain at others’ blessings, or pain at their deserved successes. 3. Envy is pain at another getting one of those things you yourself wanted. Or it is pain at things falling to others but not to us. 4. Rivalry is pain at things falling to others, although they fall also to us. (Aff. 1.2)44 All of these could be rendered in English as “envy,” though ζῆλος and ζηλοτυπία shade into “rivalry.” The difference between ζῆλος and ζηλοτυπία is minute and, indeed, Cicero felt he had to explain his use of obtrectatio for the latter: “Rivalry is what I would take ζηλοτυπία to mean: that is, pain on account of another obtaining also that which one had desired oneself” (Obtrectatio autem est, ea quam intelligi ζηλοτυπίαν volo, aegritudo ex eo, quod alter quoque potiatur eo, quod ipse concupiverit).45 Yet just as pity describes the pain of others’ suffering, each of these emotions describes the pain of others’ success, so often felt to be at odds with one’s own. Cicero, however, picking up the strongly negative associations of φθόνος (which he renders as invidentia), points out that this term is only properly used of anyone “who suffers no harm at the profits of another, but is grieved nevertheless that he enjoys them” (qui autem, cui alterius commoda nihil noceant, tamen eum doleat his frui).46 Cicero—ever mindful of Roman law and Republican order—also explains why misericordia is only felt for “another suffering without deserving it” (ex miseria alterius iniuria laborantis). Obviously, he explains, “No one is moved with pity at the punishment of a murderer or traitor” (nemo enim parricidae aut proditoris supplicio misericordia commovetur).47 The law and the state bound the feeling of misericordia. Looking back at the Greek lists it is, therefore, intriguing that Ps-Andronicus includes two words for compassion—ἔλεος and οἶκτος. The former translates to Cicero’s misericordia and requires the knowledge that another suffers unjustly; the latter, however, is simply pain felt at anyone else’s suffering. One may not feel pity on the traitor, but one can feel some pain at their suffering. Pity, as David Konstan has argued, requires a sense that another’s suffering could be one’s own, without merging into the pain of the person pitied; both parties retain their distinctive emotional positions.48 However, the social classes, distinctions, and laws, that both enable and circumscribe pity do not inscribe hard borders to pain. They only inflect its language and expression. All the forms of

44 45 46 47 48

Kreuttner (1884), 13.1–8. Tusc. 4.8.18 (LCL 141, pp. 346–347.). Tusc. 4.8.17 (LCL 141, pp. 344–347.). Tusc. 4.8.18 (LCL 141, pp. 346–347). Konstan (2001), 50–60; so too King (2018), 25.

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λύπη that occur “at” (ἐπὶ) something refer us to pain inflamed and delimited by culture-bound causes and circumstances. All these definitions answer the question, “Why are you in pain?” Each answers it, moreover, by implying a story behind pain—a setting, a cast of characters, and conflict that has given rise to present pain. The remaining definitions detail the sensations of λύπη, both in cognitive and somatic dimensions. They blur the boundaries of “psychological” and “bodily”. For example, here are a few definitions describing somatic sensations: ηʹ Ἄχος δὲ λύπη ἀφωνίαν ἐμποιοῦσα. θʹ Σφακελισμὸς δὲ λύπη σφοδρά. ιβʹ Ὄχλησις δὲ λύπη στενοχωροῦσα ἢ ἀναστροφὴν οὐ διδοῦσα. 8. Distress is pain that renders you speechless. 9. Spasming is sharp pain. 12. Annoyance is pain that constricts you and offers no release. (Aff. 1.2)49 It is not clear what causes these forms of λύπη. It is, rather, pain made known in its effects—whether losing one’s voice or feeling constricted and suffocated.50 I can imagine someone answering a physician with these descriptions. “Can you describe the pain?” Yes, it is sharp; or, it is suffocating.51 Sometimes we have synechdoches, pain defined as its physical expression: γόος, for example, is the “wailing of someone in the throes of λύπη” (θρῆνος ἀγομένου κατὰ λύπην).52 Other forms suggest bodily sensation but may, by metonymy, refer also to cognition or even those strange states we call “moods”: ζʹ Ἄχθος δὲ λύπη βαρύνουσα. ιγʹ Ὀδύνη δὲ λύπη εἰσδύνουσα καὶ ὀξεῖα.

49 50 51

52

Kreuttner (1884), 14.4–5, 8. One does get the sense that pain is the agent in these definitions. Cf., Scarry (1985), 15–16. Galen worried a good deal about the language patients used to describe pain, though he was not the first physician to do so and in fact his discussion of diagnostically useful pain language in De locis affectis is in context of an argument against Archigenes’ pain language. There is much good discussion of both Archigenes’ language, and Galen’s response, in King (2018), 80–88; see also Roby (2016), 304–324. Aff. 1.2.1 (Kreuttner [1884], 15.5).

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7. Depression is pain that weighs you down. 13. Agony is stinging pain that creeps in. (Aff. 1.2)53 Some pain weighs a person down; some creeps in and stings. Arius Didymus defines ὀδύνη a little differently: “λύπη that creeps in and then strikes.”54 Pain grows, it makes us sluggish or makes us feel sluggish. These definitions all answer the question, “How does it hurt?” However, sometimes pain’s defining sensation is perceived less in the body than in how we think. Such pain is so intertwined with mental activity that it both comes from and feeds into trains of thought. Ἀνία is “λύπη coming from cogitation” (ἐξ ἀναλογισμῶν) while σύγχυσις is “λύπη that hinders someone from seeing what will be” (λύπη κωλύουσα διορᾶν τὸ μέλλον).55 For both these forms, Diogenes Laertius offers unusually fulsome definitions. He calls ἀνία “λύπη that remains or even intensifies from cogitation” (λύπην ἐκ διαλογισμῶν μένουσαν ἢ ἐπιτεινομένην).56 Pained thinking, feeding on itself, growing—it is a marvellous image. He also expands on σύγχυσις, probably to clarify that “seeing what will be” is not about divination, but clear perception: “σύγχυσιν is irrational λύπην, which exhausts a person and keeps them from comprehending things at hand” (ἄλογον, ἀποκναίουσαν καὶ κωλύουσαν τὰ παρόντα συνορᾶν).57 This is pain so bad one cannot think of a future without it, or see the present without its distorting everything. Pain may be sensed in so many ways, but these lists offer language to describe and categorise its sensation. At the time of its attack pain may “render one speechless” (as does ἄχος) but through these definitions someone can, afterwards at least, give voice to the sensations—sharp, heavy, suffocating, constrictive; I could not see, I could not speak, I was struggling so hard I wept, and so on. There is no sense that these various forms of λύπη are exclusive of each other. In the examples from Dorotheus and Plutarch above, terms were twined and stacked on each other to create a more vivid sense of suffering. The language of the definitions gives form to λύπη by connecting this general term for pain or suffering to a range of bodily sensations, social conditions, even cognitive impairments, to words and phrases that make pain, in some degree, communicable. Taken together, they begin to form a lexicon of pain with which stories can be crafted, told, and understood.

53 54 55 56 57

Kreuttner (1884), 14.3 and 14.9. de Phil. sect. 75.2.9–10: [Ὀ]δύνην δέ, λύπην εἰσδύνουσαν καὶ καθικνουμένην. Diogenes Laertius, in his typically clipped style, merely says, “ὀδύνην λύπην ἐπίπονον” (7.112). Kreuttner (1884), 14.10 and 14.13. D.L. 7.112 = SVF 3.407. D.L. 7.112 = SVF 3.407.

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Learning One’s Lines

I turn now from definitions back to the concatenated forms of λύπη. The terms found in lists range from the everyday to the rare and exotic. Everyone might know terms like φθόνος and ἔλεος, but others like ἄχθος and σφακελισμός are not likely heard around the agora. We have seen already how even terms like invidentia are bound up in cultural norms, while other, reasonably common words like ζηλοτυπία present challenges to the translator. Every word for pain comes loaded with moral and ethical values bound up with cultural and social norms. These values play out in “emotional scripts,” predetermined patterns of speech and action followed in emotional arousal recognisable to oneself and others as that emotion. These scripts direct and constrain the visible practice of emotions and, in the case of λύπη, pain itself.58 As Javier Moscoso put it so well, “[P]ain exists under the form of a social drama.”59 At the same time, Daniel King has shown that the boundaries between “everyday and common patient language” of pain are not clearly delineated from “marked literary metaphor”.60 The drama of pain is staged through the reverberating echoes of education based in literature and story. I want, therefore, to focus on these exotic words, which engage poetic (especially epic and tragic) contexts and suggest exemplary emotional scripts. The most unusual words are actually frequent in epic, elegy, and tragedy. Since the poetry where these words live formed the basis of Greek, and later Roman, education, I think their employment in lists is intended to conjure up their poetic origins. It is striking, then, how emotion-words live in the exemplary lives depicted in Greek epic and tragedy. Some of these texts were encountered directly, like the Iliad or Aeneid, which formed the basis of so much basic education. Others might have been met only through doxographies or discussions in, among others, Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric. The echoes and allusions I suggest below are only some of those possible and it is well worth further consideration how Aristotle’s influential account of the poetics and rhetoric of passions might inflect what list-readers heard. Among the more obscure terms, ἄχθος, which means, literally, “weight”, is defined as grief that “weighs one down”. This is a word with a long poetic pedi-

58 59 60

Goldingay (2018), 61–82. Robert Kaster (2005) makes extensive use of scripts in his discussion of Roman emotions. Moscoso (2012), 6. King (2018), 86 in reference to the physician Archigenes’ specific language of pain. See also Lewis (this volume).

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gree, but which is rarely encountered in more mundane contexts. For example, in Aeschylos’ Agamemnon, we hear this: δύσφρων γὰρ ἰὸς καρδίαν προσήμενος ἄχθος διπλοίζει τῶι πεπαμένωι νόσον· τοῖς τ’ αὐτὸς αὐτοῦ πήμασιν βαρύνεται καὶ τὸν θυραῖον ὄλβον εἰσορῶν στένει. For malignant venom, having penetrated the heart Doubles the ἄχθος of its victim’s disease: He is weighed down by its calamities, And groans to see another’s heartfelt joy. (Ag. 834–837) This passage echoes the definition of ἄχθος in the list, and ties it to an exemplar, albeit a cautionary one. At this point in the Agamemnon, the Chorus is hinting darkly at the motives that will bring Clytemnaestra to murder her husband. Pain weighs down her thinking and guides her from grudging loyalty to Agamemnon toward revengeful violence. While the audience may sympathise with her pain, they know too its disastrous, generational, consequences. Clytemnaestra’s emotional script is gendered and cautionary of the dangers of ἄχθος unchecked. Similarly, ἄχος, which modern lexica define vaguely as “grief” and I have rendered as “distress”, propels Achilles at a key moment in the Iliad: … Πηλεΐωνι δ’ ἄχος γένετ’, ἐν δέ οἱ ἦτορ στήθεσσιν λασίοισι διάνδιχα μερμήριξεν, ἢ ὅ γε φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ τοὺς μὲν ἀναστήσειεν, ὃ δ’ Ἀτρεΐδην ἐναρίζοι, ἦε χόλον παύσειεν ἐρητύσειέ τε θυμόν. Ἄχος came upon the son of Peleus, and the heart In his woolly breast was divided in two: Whether he would draw the swift sword from its sheath, Scatter the assembly, and slaughter the son of Atreus, Or choke down the bile and restrain his anger. (Il. 1.188–192) The example is again cautionary: Achilles is no role-model, and Athena must calm him down. Poetic terms for pain play out scripts that dramatize the cultural values around strong emotion—many of which treat it quite negatively. As scripts, the terms for pain (and other passions) would rarely refer readers

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to exemplars of virtue. Most characters in epic or tragedy are, rather, examples of the disastrous consequences that follow when emotions are allowed to run amok. Not all echoes would necessarily be negative. The lists’ audience would likely hear in ἄχος echoes of Penelope too, who might be in this case an exemplar, albeit a somewhat complicated one, of emotional self-control: ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ἀπέβη κατὰ δῶμ’ Ὀδυσῆος. τὴν δ’ ἄχος ἀμφεχύθη θυμοφθόρον, οὐδ’ ἄρ’ ἔτ’ ἔτλη δίφρῳ ἐφέζεσθαι πολλῶν κατὰ οἶκον ἐόντων … Having spoken thus, she made her way through Odysseus’ house. Ἄχος, that corrodes the spirit, washed over her, And she could no longer bear to sit on some bench with so many in his house … (Od. 4.715–717) Penelope manages her pain through retreat and refusal. She, like her husband, knows the importance of managing and, if necessary, hiding emotions. Any educated reader would know these Homeric lines, would have in mind figures like Achilles, Penelope, Odysseus (who managed his pain so carefully!) and know how they played out different emotional scripts and their consequences. Intertextual echoes are always multiple, so it is somewhat speculative to assign this or that passage to terms in a list. I have offered a few particularly resonant texts, though it is possible—even likely—that readers would have heard echoes not of Agamemnon but of Euripides’ Electra, or the Bacchae, or others. However, in all their possible referents, these curious terms for emotion mobilised a shared cultural framework: poems like the Iliad formed the basis of education and, together with tragedies, the repertoire of stock examples. In philosophical protreptics, like Seneca’s letters to Lucilius or Galen’s De indolentia, as well as consolatory literature like Plutarch’s De exilio, poetic exemplars feature prominently.61 These either remind an audience of the praiseworthiness of managing emotions, or the danger of mismanaging them. The poetic examples provide—quite literally—scripts for emotional practices. If one succumbs to ἄχθος, one can expect to act malignantly; if one is overtaken by ἄχος, violence may not be far behind. Implied exempla, as much as the definitions highlighted above, emphasise λύπη’s deleterious power, which must be man-

61

E.g., Gal. Ind. 52.77 (Brodersen [2015], 92, 104); Plut. de exil. 2 (599E–F); Sen. Ep. 8.9–10, 56.12 (Hense [1938], 19, 173).

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aged, if not extirpated, since its physiological effects are decidedly negative and its behavioural scripts violent and destructive. Sometimes the scripting is even explicit. In the Suda, that great Byzantine work of antiquarian erudition, the entry for λύπη includes Diogenes Laertius’ list of forms, and then concludes with a quotation from Sophocles’ Electra: “For why does this grieve me when, dying in word, I may be preserved in deed and win glory? I deem no word evil if accompanied with gain” (τί γάρ με λυπεῖ τοῦθ’ ὅταν λόγῳ θανὼν ἔργοισι σωθῶ κἀξενέγκωμαι κλέος; δοκῶ μὲν ὡς οὐδὲν ῥῆμα σὺν κέρδει κακόν).62 Orestes refuses unnecessary anxiety in the face of uncertain omens and determines to manage his emotions instead. In the Suda this quotation neatly bookends, and scripts, the normative statement—Stoic in origin—that “the virtuous man ought never to be grieved” (οὐ λυπηθήσεσθαι τὸν σπουδαῖον δεῖ).63 Whether implicitly or explicitly, emotion-lists evoke behavioural scripts associated with emotional experience. That most of these scripts are so negative is indicative of a more culturally normative attitude toward strong emotion, which worried over its deleterious effects on cognitive, ethical, and social behaviour. Lists do not alter these scripts; rather, they offer memory maps that can navigate emotional exemplars drawn from poetry, medicine, and the everyday.64 With definitions, the lists tie these scripts to social conditions, elucidate their somatic and cognitive sensations, and, in short, provide a memorable order to the unruly menagerie of pain and distress.

6

Revised Editions of Affective Lexica

Lists connect the abstractions of philosophical psychology to the norms of everyday experience in memory maps that help individuals navigate feeling using a few key landmarks. First, there is the sensation of pain and distress, for which lists offer vivid images. Then, there are the relational causes and social circumstances that arouse, constrain, and inflect pain. Lastly, there are the scripts and exemplars implied by the language of pain. Together, these elements, written so simply in the lists, create an affective lexicon. Unlike Mladen Stilinovic’s, in which every word had only the definition “PAIN”, in the passionlists “pain” is filled out with meaning; it is located, imaged and ultimately shared through the terms, definitions, and allusions of the lists. 62 63 64

Soph. El. 59–61. Suda, s.v. Λ.843. “Memory map”: the term is Mary Carruthers’, see Carruthers (1998), especially 7–46 and 116–170.

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But affective lexica are subject to the same entropic processes as all language: they provide snapshots of what is really always in process. The scripts implied by passion-lists’ terms depend on a shared education and the poetic texts on which it was based. So long as the Iliad or the Aeneid were the basis of children’s literacy, their characters provided exemplars for adults’ emotional norms. In late antiquity, though, this basis began to undergo radical changes. Christians began to use other texts for education—Didymus the Blind, for example, practiced the work of a grammarian, but used the Psalms rather than the Iliad as textual basis.65 The forms of education remained the same, but the texts and, therefore, the exemplars and scripts, were changed. Homeric examples became Biblical ones: anger and conflict are no longer scripted by Achilles and Agamemnon but by David and Saul. Emotional regimes were made not only to embrace but to doggedly pursue states like “humility”—a foreign enough notion for Roman honestiores! Lists persisted through these changes—Evagrius Ponticus’ “eight thoughts” is only the most famous of them—and for the most part Christian authors simply reiterated the terms and definitions of the old passion-lists. But over time the changes of normative text and emotional regime began to show. Thus, Nemesius of Emesa at the end of the fourth century listed four forms of λύπη: ἄχος ἄχθος φθόνος ἔλεος· ἔστι δὲ ἄχος λύπη ἀφωνίαν ἐμποιοῦσα, ἄχθος δὲ λύπη βαρύνουσα, φθόνος δὲ λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις ἀγαθοῖς, ἔλεος δὲ λύπη ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις κακοῖς. Distress, depression, malice, pity. Distress is pain that renders you speechless, depression pain that weighs you down. Malice is pain at another’s blessings, pity is pain at their sufferings. (De natura hominis 19)66 Nemesius’ list neatly balances two exotic terms with two mundane ones. The two exotic ones pick out sensations of pain while the two mundane terms mark out social causes. In Christian terms, though, ἔλεος, rendered usually as “mercy” (rather than “pity”) is a characteristic of God—he is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4) and “his mercy is to generations and generations” (Luke 1:50)—and a virtue. “Blessed,” after all, “are the merciful for they shall receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7). The valence of ἔλεος has changed and, though a virtuous person ought not be envious, or grieved generally, they should be merciful. In Nemesius’ list it is telling

65 66

As discussed at length in Stefaniw (2019). Morani (1987), 80.1–3.

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that the key qualification of ἔλεος—that one perceives the other as suffering unjustly—is absent. Mercy is free to all, without regard to their deserts.67 Now “the quality of mercy is not strained” by class or convention and, with Christ as exemplar, is scripted with divine approval and even commission. Thus, while the semantics of the list remain constant, the meanings of emotions and scripts appropriate for their performance (or refusal) change, in some cases quite dramatically.

7

Lists and Narratives

I have said that the passion-lists provide language for narratives of pain. I do not mean that all pain narratives rely on or require these lists but, rather, that the lists concatenate and organise the language of sensation, cause, and circumstance, in ways useful to those trying to articulate pain. I will, therefore, close with two vignettes of pain, which interweave the physical and emotional dimensions of λύπη, told with language redolent of passion-lists. The first example comes from Galen, the second-century physician, philosopher, self-promoter, and prolific writer. Wishing to explain why, when sick, we suffer muscle aches, he offers a lovely analogy: ὡς οὖν, ἄν τις ἡμῶν ἀνάγκην εἶχεν ἐξημμένον τοῦ τραχήλου λίθον τινὰ μὴ μέγαν περιφέρειν, ἐῤῥωμένος μὲν ὢν ἀλύπως ἔφερεν, ἄῤῥωστος δὲ γενόμενος εὐθὺς ἂν ὡς ἄχθος ἀποθέσθαι προὐθυμεῖτο, κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ τῶν μυῶν ἕκαστος, οἷόν τινα λίθον βαστάζων τὸ ἐξημμένον ὀστοῦν, ἔστ’ ἂν μὲν ἐῤῥωμένος ᾖ, καταφρονεῖ, μηδ’ αἰσθανόμενος τὰ πολλὰ μηδ’ ἐπὶ βραχὺ τοῦ βάρους, ὅταν δ’ ἀῤῥωστήσῃ, τηνικαῦτ’ αἰσθάνεται καὶ δυσφορεῖ, καὶ οἷόν τι ἀποσείσασθαι ἄχθος ἐπιθυμῶν ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλου σχήματος ὀρέγεται. Imagine if one of us had to carry some stone—not a very large one— suspended from his neck: when healthy he would carry it without pain, but if he became sick he would greatly wish to tear it off as though it were burdensome. In the same fashion, each of the muscles, carrying the bone

67

Indeed, in Christian theology, most appropriate not to the innocent but to the guilty, while divine pity in the Septuagint is, at the very least, open to the undeserving and, at times, the radically other. Konstan’s discussion (2001), 120–125, is very limited in regard to Jewish and later Christian theologies of ἔλεος, and the topic is worth further exploration in an emotions-historical context.

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suspended to it like a stone, would, when healthy, think nothing of it, not perceiving the slight extra weight. However, when sick, immediately it senses the weight, is vexed, and, longing to cast it off like a burden it seeks a different position. (Gal. Mot. Musc. 1.10 [= 4.420K]) Admittedly, the description is anthropomorphic, but the use of pain language makes clear the sense of fatigue, burden, and ache, that anyone who has had the flu will recognise. Despite lying still in what should be a relaxed position, it feels as though your very bones are pulling and weighing you down. Four centuries later, Dorotheus, a well-educated monastic leader in Gaza, one day described for monks under his direction an experience of mental and emotional affliction that he suffered as a young man: Ἔτι ὄντος μου ἐκεῖ ἐν τῷ κοινοβίῳ, ἅπαξ ἐγένετό μοι μεγάλη καὶ ἀφόρητος λύπη, καὶ ἤμην ἐν τοιούτῳ κόπῳ καὶ στενώσει, ὡς ὑπάγων σχεδὸν παραδοῦναι αὐτὴν τὴν ψυχήν μου. Ἦν δὲ ἡ θλίψις ἐκείνη ἐξ ἐπιβουλῆς δαιμόνων, καὶ ἔστιν ὁ τοιοῦτος πειρασμὸς ἐκ τοῦ φθόνου τῶν δαιμόνων ἐπιφερόμενος· βαρύτατος μέν, ὀλιγοχρόνιος δέ, βαρύς, σκοτεινός, ἀπαράκλητος, μὴ ἔχων ποθὲν μηδεμίαν ἀνάπαυσιν· ἀλλὰ πανταχόθεν στένωσις, πανταχόθεν πνιγμός. Ταχέως δὲ ἔρχεται ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θεοῦ εἰς τὴν ψυχήν, ἐπεὶ οὐδεὶς ἠδύνατο βαστάσαι. While I was still there in the coenobium, suddenly there came upon me a great and unbearable distress, and I was so pained and so hemmed in that I came near to taking my own life. I owed that affliction to the demons’ plot, and such a trial is suffered on account of the demons’ envy. It is supremely heavy, though brief—heavy, dark, inconsolable, allowing no place for rest. But every way you look there is constriction, everywhere suffocation. The grace of God comes swiftly to the soul because no one could withstand this. (Dorotheus of Gaza, Doctrinae diversae 5.67.5–8, 10–13, 14– 15)68 It may well be that in the moment he could not have described what he endured, such an “overflow of strong emotion” as it was, but later, when he sets his suffering in a narrative, he draws together the sensations described so well in passion-lists. These narratives gain in enargeia through judicious deployment of terms designed to articulate—and perhaps arouse—pain and distress, terms recognisable in the passion-lists we have been discussing.

68

Regnault & de Préville (1963), 92.260–262.

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Dorotheus and Galen would both have encountered some form of passionlists in their rhetorical and philosophical formation, and Galen, at least, engages with them explicitly in texts concerning moral psychology.69 It is less clear whether Dorotheus or he had lists in mind when crafting their narratives, or whether the lists’ influence was more subterranean. Plutarch may have followed lists more closely, as when he describes the onset of vice: “But vice, needing no preparation and entering together with the soul, shatters, casts down, and fills a person with wailing, heaviness of spirit, and regret” (ἡ δὲ κακία δίχα πάσης παρασκευῆς τῇ ψυχῇ συνελθοῦσα συνέτριψε καὶ κατέβαλε, λύπης ἐνέπλησε θρήνων βαρυθυμίας μεταμελείας τὸν ἄνθρωπον).70 But for most people, the lists were probably a feature of the schoolroom, part of their training in rhetoric, and not the study of their mature years. It is telling that the anonymous Ars rhetorica politica explains which emotions are to be roused during an ἐπίλογον by resort to a Chrysippean list, definitions and all, albeit a greatly truncated one. Unsurprisingly given its forensic focus, the only forms of λύπη discussed and defined are ἔλεος and φθόνος.71 While other sections describe how to rouse emotion, the list clarifies which ones and why. The lists do not create a language for pain. They gather and organise myriad terms scattered throughout existing language to locate, describe, and explain pain. For readers educated with them, lists preserve in echoes and allusions the cultural norms and scripts of pain, and for scholars today they show the subtle shifts of emotional regimes the run like fault-lines through Mediterranean cultures from the Hellenistic era to Byzantium. I began this essay with an epitaph from T.S. Eliot. It is a passage in his Four Quartets lamenting the perennial challenge of poetic diction. When it comes to finding the right words, Eliot concludes that … each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion.72

69 70 71 72

As when defining and evaluating φθόνος: Aff. Dig. 7.2 (CMG v.4.1.1, p. 124 de Boer = 5.35K). An vitiositas 498D; Plutarch concatenates terms from passion-lists in many texts, especially De cohibenda ira and De tranquillitate animi. Anonymus Seguerianus, Ars rhetorica politica, §224–225 (Dilts & Kennedy [1997], 62.22– 27). Eliot (1974), 190: Four Quartets: “East Coker”, v, lines 6–10.

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The problem is not lack of words or lack of reading. Eliot was as aware as anyone of the poet’s debt to their forebears. No, the problem, Eliot claims, the reason why each poem is a “new start” and a “different kind of failure”, lies with the poet’s own emotions—the imprecision and lack of discipline presented by the very “strong emotion” that ought to emerge in poetic speech. The wellspring of poetry dooms it to being a personal and infinitely repeated challenge, which cannot be answered by using another’s words or style. Pain is little different in this regard, as Elaine Scarry and Mladen Stilinovic so forcefully argue in their respective works: pain demands and at the same time prevents its communication; it is so totally mine that it seems impossible that it also be yours. Yet, against both Scarry and Stilinovic, I think we see in the passion-lists a valiant “raid on the inarticulate” and an attempt to provide readers with something better than “shabby equipment always deteriorating”. They deny Scarry’s thesis of pain’s incommunicability and reverse Mladen Stilinovic’s claim about its radical meaninglessness. Rather than every word dissolving into λύπη, λύπη is incorporated into words that suggest an organisation even for pain, a way not of limiting its experience but of locating its sensation and explaining its arousal. The passion-lists enable the communication of pain by fashioning lexica at once founded in and limited by shared culture and education.

References Editions and Translations Aeschylus. (1972) Agamemnon. D. Page (ed.), Aeschylus Tragoediae: Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoedias. (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Anonymous Seguerianus. (1997) Ars rhetorica politica. M. Dilts & G. Kennedy (eds & transl.), Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire. Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara. (Mnemosyne Supplements). Leiden: Brill. Aristotle. (1955) De sensu et sensibilia. W.D. Ross (ed.), Aristotle. Parva naturalia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Aristotle. (1963) Ars Rhetorica. D. Ross (ed.), Aristotle: Ars Rhetorica. (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Aristotle. (1963) Ethica Nicomachea. I. Bywater (ed.), Aristotle: Ethica Nicomachea. (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Arius Didymus. (1867) De philosophorum sectis liber. F.W.A. Mullach (ed.), Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, vol. 2. Paris: Didot. Aspasius. (1889) In ethica Nichomachea commentaria. G. Heylbut (ed.), Aspasii in ethica Nicomachea quae supersunt commentaria. CAG 19.1. Berlin: Reimer.

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Cicero. (1927) Tusculan Disputations. J.E. King (transl.), Cicero. Tusculan Disputations. (LCL 141). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Clement of Alexandria. (1960–1970) Paedagogus. H. -I. Marrou (ed.), M. Harl & C. Matray & C. Mondésert (transl.), Clément d’Alexandrie. Le pédagogue, 3 vols. (Sources chrétiennes 70, 108, 158). Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Diogenes Laertius. (1925) Vitae Philosophorum. R.D. Hicks (transl.) Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. i (books 1–5) and vol. ii (books 6–10). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dorotheus of Gaza. (1963) Doctrinae diversae. L. Regnault & J. de Préville (eds), Dorothée de Gaza. Oeuvres spirituelles. (Sources chrétiennes 92). Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Evagrius Ponticus. (1865) De Octo spiritibus malitiae. J. -P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca), vol. 79, 1145–1164. Paris: Garnier. Evagrius Ponticus. (1971) Praktikos. A. Guillaumont & C. Guillaumont (eds), Évagre le Pontique. Traité pratique ou le moine, vol. 2. (Sources chrétiennes 171). Paris: Éditions du Cerf. Galen. (1822) De motu musculorum. K.G. Kühn (ed.), Claudii Galeni Opera omnia, vol. 4, 367–464. Leipzig: Cnobloch. Galen. (1824) De symptomatum causis. K.G. Kühn (ed.), Claudii Galeni Opera omnia, vol. 7, 85–272. Leipzig: Cnobloch. Galen. (1937) De propriorum animi cuiuslibet affectuum dignotione et curatione. W. de Boer (ed.), Corpus medicorum Graecorum, vol. 5. (CMG v.4.1.1). Leipzig: Teubner. Galen. (1978) De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis. P.H. De Lacy (ed.), Galen. On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato. (CMG v.4.1.2). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Galen. (2015) De indolentia. K. Brodersen (ed.), Galenos, Die verbrannte Bibliothek: Peri Alypias / Über die Unverdrossenheit. Wiesbaden: Marix Verlag. Homer. (1931) Iliad. T.W. Allen (ed.), Homeri Ilias, vols. 2–3. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Homer. (1962) Odyssey. P. von der Mühll (ed.), Homeri Odyssea. Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. John of Damascus. (1973) Expositio fidei orthodoxae. B. Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 2. (Patristische Texte und Studien 12). Berlin: De Gruyter. Maximus the Confessor. (2014) Ambigua ad Ioannem. N. Constas (ed. & transl.), On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, vol. 1. (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nemesius of Emesa. (1987) De natura hominis. M. Morani (ed.), Nemesii Emeseni de natura hominis. (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana). Leipzig: Teubner. Paul. (2012) 2Corinthians. E. Nestle, K. Aland, et al. (eds), Novum Testamentum Graece (28th Ed.). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. Plato. (1963) Timaeus. J. Burnet (ed.), Plato: Opera, vol. 4. (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Plutarch. (1939) De cohibenda ira. De tranquillitate animi. An vitiositas ad infelictatem sufficiat. W.C. Hembold (transl.), Plutarch. Moralia, vol. vi. (LCL 337). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plutarch. (1959) De exilio. P.H. De Lacy & B. Einarson (transl.), Plutarch. Moralia, vol. vii. (LCL 405). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pseudo-Andronicus. (1884) De affectibus. X. Kreuttner (ed.), Andronici qui fertur libelli Περὶ παθῶν, vol. 1: De affectibus. Heidelberg: Winter. Seneca. (1938) Epistulae. O. Hense (ed.), Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. Leipzig: Teubner. Servius. (1884) Aneidos librorum commentarii. G. Thilo & H. Hagen (eds), Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii. Leipzig: Teubner. Sophocles. (1990) Electra. H. Lloyd-Jones & N.G. Wilson (eds), Sophoclis fabulae. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Modern Scholarship Carruthers, M. (1998) The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eco, U. (2009) The Infinity of Lists. A. McEwen (transl.). New York: Rizzoli. Eliot, T.S. (1974) “Four Quartets” in Collected Poems 1909–1962. London: Faber&Faber. Erskine, A. (1997) ‘Cicero and the Expression of Grief’, in S. Morton Braund & C. Gill (eds), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 36–47. Frevert, U. (2011) Emotions in History: Lost and Found. (The Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lectures). Budapest: Central European University Press. Frevert, U. (2014) ‘Defining Emotions: Concepts and Debates over Three Centuries’, in U. Frevert et al. (eds), Emotional Lexicons: Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling, 1700–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–31. Goldingay, S. (2018) ‘Act Like It Hurts: Questions of Role and Authenticity in the Communication of Chronic Pain’, in E.J. Gonzalez-Polledo & J. Tarr (eds), Painscapes: Communicating Pain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 61–82. Graver, M. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kaster, R. (2005) Emotion, Restraint and Community in Ancient Rome (Classical Culture and Society). Oxford: Oxford University Press. King, D. (2018) Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knuuttila, S. (2004) Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knuuttila, S. & Sihvola, J. (1998) ‘How the Philosophical Analysis of the Emotions was Introduced’, in J. Sihvola & T. Engberg-Pedersen (eds), The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy. Berlin: Springer Science+Business Media, pp. 1–21.

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Konstan, D. (2001) Pity Transformed. London: Bloomsbury. Moscoso, J. (2012) Pain: A Cultural History. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Nussbaum, M. (2001) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pigeaud, P. (1981) La Maladie de l’âme. Étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradition médico-philosophique antique. Paris: Les belles lettres. Reddy, W.F. (2001) The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roby, C. (2016) ‘Galen on the Patient’s Role in Diagnosis: Sensation, Consensus, and Metaphor’, in G. Petridou & C. Thumiger (eds), Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 304–324. Scarry, E. (1985) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scheer, M. (2012) ‘Are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a history)? A Bourdieuian approach to understanding emotion’, History and Theory 51: 193–220. Scheer, M. (2014) ‘Topographies of Emotion’, in U. Frevert et al. (eds) Emotional Lexicons: Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling, 1700–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 32–61. Sorabji, R. (2002) Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. (The Gifford Lectures, Oxford). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stefaniw, B. (2019) Christian Reading: Language, Ethics, and the Order of Things. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stilinovic, M. (1994) Preoccupations (Gallerie l’Ollave, Lyon). M. Marušić (transl.). Available at: https://mladenstilinovic.com/works/625‑2/ (Accessed 19/7/2021). Wittgenstein, L & Anscombe, G. (eds) (2001) Philosophische Untersuchungen. 3rd Ed. London: Blackwell.

Index Locorum Achilles Tatius (Ach. Tat.) 6.21.1–2 246–247 Aeschylus Agamemnon 834–837 Prometheus Bound 566 580 681 879–880 Supplicants 442 Aëtius Amidenus Medical Books 8.50 9.27

288 59n52 59n52 59n52 59n52 36

161n46 161

Alexander of Aphrodisias Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 303.20–21 198–199 Commentary on Aristotle’s Topics 144.12–13 193n 181.2 194 Problemata Ethica (PE) 120.11–15 180, 180n16, 182 124.22ff. 180n14 124.26–27 184 124.30, 35 183n27 125.2–6 181 125.29–31 187 125.32–35 194 126.7–13 190 126.11–12 191 126.13 194 126.16–17 196 126.28, 29, 30 198n 127.3–7 185 127.8–9 198 127.9–10 195 136.28–29 185–186 137.9–10 195 137.13–17 188

Alexander of Tralles Therapeutics 2.581.22–25 11.1

136 (= Heim no. 152) 135n45

Anon. Ars rhetorica politica 224–225 294n71 225–228 280n34 Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics 2–5 153.20–22 199 The Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice 3.6 234 Archigenes On Affected Places (ap. Galen Loc. Aff.) 8.90–92K (2.8.1–2) 149, 152–153 8.91K (2.8.2) 145n2, 160, 169 8.110K (2.9.1) 145n2, 150, 152, 160, 168, 169, 170 (ap. Aëtius Amidenus, Medical Books) 9.27 161 Aretaeus On the Causes and Signs of Acute Diseases 2.12.2 132 2.12.3 132 2.12.5 130–131 Aristippus of Cyrene Fragmenta (ap. Eusebius Prep. Ev.) xiv.19.1 33 xiv.21.3 34 Aristotle De Sensu (De Sens.) 1.436a8–10 277n19 De Somno et Vigilia (Somn.Vig.) 1.6.454a 111n44 Nicomachean Ethics (NE) 1152b1–1154a36 277n12, 279n26 1104b8–13 176n 1152b8 179

300 Nicomachean Ethics (NE) (cont.) 1153b1–4 181 1172b18–20 181 1173a29–31 179 1174b33 182 1175b14–15 182 Rhetoric (Rh.) 2.1 68 2.1.8 277n12 2.8.2 88 Arius Didymus De philosophorum sectis liber (de Phil. sect.) 74.1.3–5 281 74.2.20–22 278n20 74.2.24–75.2.10 280n32 75.2.9–10 286 Aspasius Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics 143.15–16 188n Augustine Confessions (Conf.) 4.3.7–7.12 264n46 4.7.12 264 6.15.25 264n47, 265n48 9.11.27 265n49 9.12.30 265n53 9.12.30 265n5 De civitate Dei (Civ.) 1.10 (12.97–98) 269n69 1.18 (19.25–27) 259n18 1.28 (29.19–37) 270n73 14.2 (415.13–33) 262n36 14.3 (416.34–37) 261n32 14.5 (420.18–20) 261n33 14.7 (423.59–630) 261n29 14.10 (430.7–17) 262n34 14.15 (438.52–61) 262 14.26 (449.5–8) 268n62 19.4 (666.105–116) 266 19.13 (679.33–680.43) 268n67 21.1 (758.7–10) 267n60 21.3 (9760.13–12) 267n61 22.5 (811.42–43) 255n4 22.8 (816.53–55) 257n12 22.8 (817.97–818.122) 269n70

index locorum 22.8 (817.110–818.119) 263n43 22.8 (818.123–132) 258n13 22.8 (819.172–181) 264n44 22.8 (825.407–827.481) 264n45 22.19 (838.32–38) 268n63 22.22 (844.89–94) 259 22.24 (850.145–150) 259n19 De Doctrina Christiana (Doct. Chr.) 1.27 259n21 1.48–55 270n75 De Genesi ad litteram (de Gen. litt.) 3.16.25 268n66 9.27 259–260 de natura boni (Nat. Bon.) 20 268n65 Enarrationes in Psalmos (En. Psal.) 130.7 260n23 Epistulae (Ep.) 1.157–170 269n72 38.1 269n71 Sermones (Serm.) 224, 225, 226 221 278.4.4 260n22 286.5.4 256n5 335D. 3 270n76 Callistratus Statuarum Descriptiones (Stat.) 1.3 213 3.2 213–214 13.3 214 Celsus De Medicina (Med.) 7 proem.4

257n10

Chrysippus Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (SFV; ed. Arnim) 1.209 192n51 3.386, 391 192n51 3.391 192n51, 193 3.394 192n51 Cicero Academica i.10.36 ii.42.130

104n25 100n8

301

index locorum De finibus bonorum et malorum (Fin.) i.11.37 101n14 ii.65 237 iii.6.22 109n35 iii.15.50 103n19 iv.19.52 113n59 iv.26.72 102n17 v. 19.54 113n v. 25.73 101n13 v. 29.89 102n16 De Oratore 2.211 91 Tusculanae Disputationes (Tusc.) 1.74 238 2.14 237–238, 239 2.33 233 3.25.61 102n15 3.28–29 239 3.31 239 4.7.16 281 4.8.17 284n46 4.8.18 284n45, 284n47 4.11 261–262 Clement of Alexandria Paedagogus i.13.101.1 192 iii.xviii.35 22 (= 68B235 DK) Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Diog. Laert.) 5.22 177n 5.24 176n 7.111 192n, 193n 7.111–114 280 7.112 286n56, n57 9.61–62 100n8 9.66–67 100n8 Dorotheus of Gaza Doctrinae diversae 5.67.5–15

293

Epicharmus Poems (PCG) fr. 271

199

Epictetus Diatribes (Diatrib.) i.9.16–17 ii.5.1 Encheiridion 21 3.24.103–104

238 106n28 242 242

Epicurus Letter to Idomeneus (ap. D.L.) 10.22 32 Euripides Bacchae 664–667 Erechtheus fr. 364 Hecuba (Hec.) 548 Iphigeneia in Aulis (IA) 1553–1555 Madness of Hercules 862 Medea 250–251

59n51 199 237 237 59n52 17n24

Eusebius Ecclesiastical History (Hist. Eccl.) 5.1.9 234 Praeparatio Evangelica (Prep. Ev.) xiv.19.1 33, 34 xiv.21.3 34 Evagrios of Pontus De octo spiritibus malitiae 5 277n13 Praktikos 10 277n13 Galen Commentary On Hippocrates’ Aphorisms (Hipp. Aph.) 18A.16K (6.5) 160n39 18A.42–43K 123 18A.43K 123–124 Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics (Hipp. Epid.) 17A.872K (6.1.29) 165 17A.877.1–3 163n57

302 Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics (Hipp. Epid.) (cont.) 17A.877.12–15 (6.1.29) 163n57 17A.887K (6.1.29) 166 De indolentia (Ind.) 53 243 De motu musculorum (Mot. Musc.) 1.10 292–293 De rebus boni malique suci (Bon. Mal. Suc.) 6.814K 127 De symptomatum causis (Caus. Symp.) 2.5.11 277n15 Difference of Pulses (Diff. Puls.) 8.576–577K (2.4) 168n69 8.602–603 (2.7) 170n76 8.606–607 (2.7) 170n76 8.607–610K (2.7) 168n69 8.680–682K (3.6) 162n52, 163n54 8.750K (4.11) 161n46 On Affected Places (Loc. Aff.) 8.71K (2.2.2) 160n40 8.75–79 (2.3.1–7) 162 8.80K 52n30 8.87K (2.6.1) 150n19, n20 8.81K (2.8.1) 149n15 8.88K (2.6) 151n21 8.88–89K (2.7.2) 159n37 8.90–92K (2.8.1–2) 149, 152–153 8.91K (2.8.2) 145n2, 160, 169 8.92K (2.8.3) 149n14 8.93K (2.8.4) 162 8.101K 169n73 8.102K (2.8.19) 160n39 8.103–104K 169n73 8.104–105K 169n73 8.105K (2.8.24) 166n66 8.105–106K (2.8.25) 169 8.107K (2.8.29) 163 8.110K (2.9.1) 145n2, 150, 152, 160, 168, 169, 170 8.113–114K (2.9.8) 162n51, n52 8.115–116K (2.9.11–13) 158n36, 162n52 8.116K (2.9.11) 151n21, 165n62 8.119–120K (2.9.17) 163n54 8.124–146K (2.10.10–14) 160n41 On Hygiene (San. Tu.) 4.7.8, 22–24 129n29

index locorum On the Alimentary Faculty (Alim. Fac.) 6.604K 50 On the Composition of Drugs According to Places (Com. Med. Loc.) 13.331K 127, 133, 134n41 On the Difference of Symptoms (Diff. Symp.) 7.68K 49n19 7.235K 49n20 On Therapeutic Method (MM) 10.875K (13.2) 161n46 10.125–126K (2.6) 170n78 On the Powers of Simple Drugs (SMT) 11.432–433K 131 11.859–860K 135 On Treatment by Bloodletting (Cur. Rat. Ven. Sect.) 11.307K 129n29 Opinions of Plato and Hippocrates (PHP) 4.3.2 193n 4.7.7–8 243 6.8.77 277n18 Hesiod Theogony 214 Works and Days 401

44n3 36

Hippocrates Affections (Aff.) 16 25 31 132, 133 Aphorisms (Aph.) 3.17.4 48 5.25 129n29 6.28 123 6.29 123 6.30 123 Art of Medicine (Art.) lxix.23–26 27 Coan Prenotions (Coac.) 138 29 Diseases (Morb.) i.15, 17 23 iv.4 (550 L.) 28n60 Diseases of Women i (Mul. i) 2 50n22 25 23 43 50n23 98 129n29

303

index locorum Diseases of Women ii (Mul. ii) 24 48n16 28 24 68 50n22 Epidemics (Epid.) 1.2.4.23 49 1.3.13(2).26 49 1.3.13(5).31 49 1.3.13.(14)5 49 4.1.35 48 6.1.14 48 Internal Affections (Int.) 50 29 On Ancient Medicine (VM) vi.15 25 xx.23–27 25 xxii.42–xiii.1 26 On Barrenness (ed. Littré) 410 27 On Breaths (Flat.) i.10 31 xi 23 On Fractions (Fract.) iii.52–54 28 xliii 27 On Humours ix.15 31 On life style ii (Vict.) lxvi.60–66 28 lxxii.1–4 28 On Regimen i xviii.23 31 On the Nature of Man (Nat.Hom.) iv.1–9 25 On the Sacred Disease (Morb.Sacr.) vi.4–9 28 Places in Man (Loc.Hom.) 42 23 Prognostic (Progn.) 8.2–3 27n56 Prorrhetic 2.5 123 2.8 123, 132 Homer Iliad (Il.) 1.188–192 2.269–291

288 16, 16n22, 17

4.99 4.117 4.397–401 5.19 5.55–56 5.80–582 5.98 5.334–337 5.336 5.354 5.364 5.401 5.900 10.394 11.267–272 11.398–399 12.205–206 13.412 13.546–549 13.591 15.394 16.459 16.524 20.154 Odyssey (Od.) 1.261 4.715–717 9.413–416 9.440–441 9.453 10.213 19.455–456 22.325

15n13 16 16 15n13 15n13 15n13 15n13 18, 18n29 15 16 18n29 16 16n21 16n21 17 16 16n22 16n17 15, 16n17 15, 16n17 16n21 35 16n21 15n16 16n22 289 19 19 19 16n21 16n19 15n16

Ignatius Against Heresies 5.28.4 230 Epistle to the Magnesians (Magn.) 5.2 236 Epistle to Polycarp (Poly.) 2.3 236 Epistle to the Romans (Rom.) 4.1 236, 238 4.1.2 232 4.2 236, 242 4.3 236, 242 5.2.3 232–233 5.3 236 6.1 236

304

index locorum

Epistle to the Romans (Rom.) (cont.) 6.2 236 7.8 238 Traillians (Trall.) 4.2 247 9.1–2 234

131 126 131

Lucretius De rerum natura 2.16–19

101n12

4Maccabees 9.17–18

245–246

Marcus Aurelius Meditations (Med.) 2.1 6.33 7.33

242 124 124, 124n15

Musonius Rufus Lecture (Lec.) 6

235

136 136 136–137, 137n49 136, 136n48

Nemesius De natura hominis 19 44 58 59

291 268–269 262–263 263n39

126–127 127 127 127 128 127 127 127 126 127–128 128, 134 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 126 131 129–130

Nicander Alexipharmaca 8 16–23 18–19 19–20 24–28 29 35 74–82 81 85 112 119 121 122 122–123 124 124–127 125 158

47n15 55 50 50 55 57n45 57n45 55n39 47n15, 57 56n41 56n41 48 47n15, 48, 49n21, 55 47n15, 49n21 55 47n15 58 47n15, 57 59

Inscriptions Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) ii2 4514 6 138 14 138 23 137 24–25 138 25 138 Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) iv2 1, 122 ll. 132–133 137 Epidaurian Iamata 43 137 Lucian Gallus 23 Lover of Lies 7–8 9 10 11 Podagra 1–29 15–22 30–40 44–45 54 66–71 69–72 85 112 112–128 117–124 119–123 125 127 129–137 131–137 136 180 245 265–274 275–287

297–307 308 311

124n11

305

index locorum Alexipharmaca (cont.) 158–159 160–161 192 195–196 196 207–208 211 212–213 213 215 215–220 221–222 241 244–248 256–259 298–308 334–342 335 338–339 340 379 398 382 391 431 459 465–482 474 475–476 509 510 543 581 594 598 719–733

59 59 55 44 47n15 50 52 60 47n15, 57–58 51 60 61 51 53 53–54 54n38 54n38 47n15, 48 48 56 50 47n15 50 53n35 47n15 47n15 51n27, 54n38 56 56 49n21 47n15 47n45 49n21 47n15 47n15 54n38

Ovid Metamorphoses (Met.) 6.382–400 209–216 Petronius Satyricon (Sat.) 117

244

Pindar Pythian 3.47–54

137

Plato Laws 732e Phaedo (Phd.) 62C 67E Philebus 31b5–6 Timaeus (Ti.) 69d Pliny the Younger Letters 1.12.4 1.12.5–6

22–23 238 238 178 277n12, 279n27

125 125n18

Plutarch An vitiositas 498D 294n70 De Libidine et Aegritudine (Lib.aeg.) 7 193n57 On the Intelligence of Animals 3, 960e–961a 31 Polycarp Letter to the Philippians (Philip.) 13.2 230 Porphyry de Abstinentia (Abst.) 1.33.1 Sententiae (Sent.) 18

263n40 263n41

Posidonius Fragmenta (ed. I. Kidd and Edelstein) fr. 159 109n33 fr. 169A 107–108, 109n33 fr. 179 103n21 Prudentius Peristephanon (Perist.) 5.99 5.107–108 5.113–116 5.117–120 5.125–128 5.157–160 10.436–440 10.761–763

221 217n44 217–219 219–221 222–224, 225 220n51 224 218

306

index locorum

Pseudo-Andronicus On Passions 1.1 (= SVF iii.391) 1.2 (= SVF iii.414)

193n57, 277n14 274, 282–286

Pseudo-Aristotle Problemata (Pr.) 872b35–36 881b30–31

164 191n50

Quintilian Institutio Oratoria (Inst.) iii.7.24 116n67 Seneca the Elder Controversiae 2.5 2.5.2 2.5.3 2.5.4 2.5.5 2.5.6 2.5.7 10.2.24 10.4 10.4.1 10.4.2 10.4.3 10.4.4 10.4.5 10.4.7 10.4.10 10.4.12 10.4.16 Suasoriae 1.1

70, 71, 73 90 84n87 73n34, 83 73n36, 74 73n37 90 81 70, 76, 89 77, 85 71, 72 81 72 72 82, 85 79, 82, 86, 86n92 86n93 86n94 67

Seneca the Younger De Beneficiis (Ben.) v. 13.2 104 De Constantia (Constant.) 10.4 100n7, 111n45 De Ira (Ir.) ii.2.1 111 ii.2.2 111n45 ii.4.1 111 De Providentia (Prov.) 2.2 100n7 2.6 116 3.1 115

4.4 116n66 4.5 115 4.7 116n66 4.8 116 4.11 116n67 4.12 115n64 Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Ep.) 5.4 105 9.3 100n7 14.5 240 16.19 104 24.5 233 37.1–2 244 57.3 111n45 57.4 111 66.14 102 66.37–39 105–106 66.38 101 66.45 101n9 67.1 99n4 67.4 237 71.29 99–100, 112–113 74.21 109 74.34 110 76.34 239 78.7 114 78.10 114 78.13 112n58 78.18 241 78.19 241 85 100 87.19 101n9 92.11 101, 104n23 92.16 103n20 94.7 114n61 99.18 111n45 102.27 242 121.17 106–107 Stobaeus Anthology 2.7.10b 3.29.9, 22 Sophocles Electra (El.) 59–61 Philoctetes 6–7

192 199

290n62 52n31

307

index locorum Troades 583

99n4

Stoic Texts Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (SVF; ed. von Arnim) i.145 111n43 ii.850 110n40 ii.858 110n42 ii.1170 115n63 iii.42 108 iii.118 103n18 iii.119 105n27 iii.121 105, 108, 109 iii.122 103n19 iii.138 101n10 iii.146 104n25 iii.229a 107 iii.391 112n57 iii.468 111n47 iii.574 101

Suetonius Life of Augustus 83

76n50

Theophrastus De sensibus (ed. Diels) 16 21 29 21 31 21 33 21, 22 Fragments (ed. Fortenbaugh, Huby, Sharples & Gutas) 549–556 13n6 On the Causes of Plants (CP) 6.13 163 On Tiredness (Lass.) 4 192n50 Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Val.Max.) 3.3.1 240

Strato of Lampsacus Fragmenta (ed. Sharples) 62 31

Vergil Aeneid (Verg. A.) 6.713–721

261n31

Suda Lexicon Λ.843

Xenophon Memorabilia (Mem.) 2.1.20

199

193n, 290n63

Index of Modern Authors Armisen-Marchetti, M. 98n1, 115n65, 240n62 Baltussen, H. 180n13, 201n75 Bouras-Vallianatos, P. 136n45, 146n7 Bourke J. 4, 6, 12n2 Budelmann, F. 12n3, 52n31 Byl, S. 5, 23n47, 132n35 Cheng, W. 1, 12n2, 13n6, 24n50 Clark, G. 239n58, 259n20, 263, 265, 270 Coakley, S. 2, 12n3, 14n10 Cobb, S. 5, 14n11, 206n6, 220n52, 221, 222, 234, 242n73 Dodds, E. 57n46, 231 Frede, D. 1, 12n2, 22n41, 23n43, 111n47 Gärtner, F. 48n16, 145n4, 146n5, 146n8, 148n10, 151n21, 155n31, 156, 160n44 Graver, M. 1, 30n64, 36n82, 111n47, 280 Hadot, P. 111n47, 244n81 Harris, W. 1, 12n2, 13n7, 14n11, 16n19, 20n34, 21n39, 30n65, 86n95, 87n97, 87n98, 87n99, n102 Jouanna, J. 136n45, 159n38, 165n62, 165n63 King, D. 5, 46n11, 146n6, 146n8, 158n36, 159n39, 162n52, 169n73, 212n23, 215n37, 233, 242n73, 246n97, 247n98, 277n16, 284n48, 285n51, 287 King, H. 5, 12n2 Kleinman, A. 6, 56n42 Konstan, D. 1, 12n3, 24n50, 30n64, 30n65, 189n45, 283n43, 284 Kozlowski, J. 220n52, 240n70 Lloyd, G. 12n4, 27n58, 163n54

Mattern, S. 30n65, 191n49 Melzack, R. 4, 156n33, 156n34 Morales, H. 215n37, 246n97 Morris, D. 4, 46, 47n13, 81n75, 81n77, 223 Moscoso, J. 14n11, 276, 287 Moss, C. 220n52, 221n57, 229n5, 231n21, 247n98 Nussbaum, M. 89n108, 244n87, 275n6, 278n21, 279n28, 280 Nutton, V. 14n12, 16n19, 133n38 Peponi, A.-E. 1, 12n2 Perkins, J. 206n6, 220n52, 234n37, 242, 243n74 Petridou, G. 5, 56n42 Pigeaud, J. 146n6, 146n8, 278n21 Prost, F. 31n66, 100n8, 103n19, 104n22, 104n23, 104n25, 107n30, 109n34, 115n63 Rey, R. 1, 4, 5, 12n11, 107n30, 211n20, 218n46 Roby, C. 5, 146n6, 146n8, 158n36, 158n37, 285n51 Scarry, E. 4, 6, 46n12, 51n26, 52, 54, 60n53, 69n14, 77n54, 81n77, 92n118, 205n1, 211, 212, 215, 276, 285n50, 295 Scullin, S. 5, 23, 24n52, 52n29 Shelemay, K. 2, 12n3 Sorabji, R. 48n18, 278n21, 279n28 van Nuffelen, P. 131n32, 255n3 Villard, L. 5, 23n45 Warren, J. 22n41, 180n18, 181n22 Webb, R. 68n8, 69n17, 88n105, 213n30, 214, 258n15 Webster, C. 23n47, 27n58, 126n23 Wolfsdorf, D. 12n2, 189, 190, 199 Woolf, C. 4, 99n3

Index of Subjects Ancient authors are included in this index only when there is no citation is present in the chapter(s). Otherwise see the Index locorum. Academics 178n8, 180, 182, 186 Achilles 288 Achthos (ἄχθος) 287–289 Aegritudo 20, 30n64 Agamemnon 17 Algedonic properties 178, 182, 183, 186, 194, 200; see also ‘pleasure’ Algos (ἄλγος) 15, 16n22, 17n23, 21n39, 23n45, 24n49, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 35 Amulet(s) 135–136, 135n45, 137 Analgesics 258 Anatomy 46n8, 55, 55n40, 56, 56n43, 147, 167, 168–170, 212, 212n26, 259 Anaxagoras 21, 22, 36 Apatheia 100 Apollo 211–212, 214–215 Aponia 101 Aquinas 197 (tristitia moderata) Aretaeus 130, 132, 133, 134n41 Aristotelianism 178, 201 Aristotle 68, 70, 88, 89, 91, 178–180, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 194, 199, 200 Arthritis 129n29, 132, 133, 133n39, 134, 134n41 Athletes 221, 236 Audience 66, 67–70 (role in rhetoric), 93 Axiology 102 Bad 181, 183, 184, 185–187, 193, 198; see also ‘pain, evil’ Bible 236, 260, 269, 277, 291 Body fragmentation 212–213, 219, 232, 233, 242, 267 lived experience 121–122, 124, 125, 126, 126n21, 138 sensory experience 155n31, 156–157, 158, 159–162, 167 Bone-breaker 72 Butcher 72

Children 83, 86; see also ‘parents’ Christ 222–224 (vision of), 234 (passion of), 235 (as teacher), 236; 258, 260 (as doctor); 292 (as exemplar) Chrysippus 101, 102n15, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114 Cicero 100, 102, 112, 261, 266, 279 Conservation 108 Consolation 258 Controversiae 66, 67 et passim (see Index Loc.) Cyclops 18–19 Cynics 189n46 Cyrenaics 33 Declamation 67, 78, 79, 89, 92 Democritus 22 Demons 293 Diagnosis 23–24, 27, 27n55, 27n58, 29, 47, 49, 146, 157, 159, 159n38, 160, 160n41, 165n63, 167, 169–170, 171, 287n51 Diomedes 18 Discipline (mental) 235, 238, 289; see also ‘praemeditatio’, ‘pain, training’ Discomfort 14, 20, 22n41, 24, 30, 31 Distress 80, 91, 239 (aegritudo), 255, 263; 276–277, 285, 287–290, 291, 293; see also ‘pain, mental’ Doctors 257, 258, 259, 260 Dolor 20, 30, 100–103, 104, 105, 108, 110, 112, 114, 117, 218n47, 233, 237–238, 241, 260– 261, 262 Ekphrasis 213–215, 241, 258 Emotion 12, 19, 20, 24, 29, 35, 215 (response), 216, 219, 261 (Augustine on –), 287 (scripts), 289 (managing), 290–291 (exemplars), 294 Emotional state 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 (projection), 19n30, 37 Empathy 69, 69n19, 70, 71, 77, 78, 80n73, 83, 90, 91, 92 (self-centred), 211, 212 (loss of), 215

310 Empedocles 21, 21n39 Enargeia 69, 72, 82, 84, 91, 92, 293 Endoxa 198, 199 Endurance 234, 245–246 Energeia 183 Envy 284, 288, 293, 291, 294 Ethics 117 Eudoxus 180–181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187, 198 Euphoria 223 Exposure 72, 82, 86 Fear 219, 263 Flee-formula(e) 135, 135n45, 136 Fortitude ( fortitudo) 105, 106, 116 Fronto 124n14, 125, 125n16, 138 Gender 78, 80, 90n112 Gladiators 244–245 Good 181, 183–188, 195–199; see also ‘pain, good’ Grief 258 (dolor), 264–265, 287–288 (achthos), 291; see also lupē Healing 259–260, 264 Homer 12, 14–19 (pain in –), 19, 22, 30, 35, 291 Humours 23, 23n43, 24, 24n51, 25, 31, 49, 50, 52n30, 127, 133–134, 165, 165n62, 166, 166n66 Hyperuricaemia 134, 134n43 Iamata 137 Illness 125 (as hereditary experience), 126n21 (as initiation) Illnesses 29 (diarrhoea), 29 (heartburn), 241 (catarrh), 257 ( fistula), 260 (tumor), 263–264 (gout/gutta), 121–138, 133, 264 (tremor); 264, 265 (fever); 266 (palsy), 292 (muscle aches), 293 (flu) Incantation 135, 135n45, 136–137; see also ‘flee-formula’ Injury 69, 71, 73, 74–78, 81–82, 85–88, 90– 93; see also ‘mutilation’, ‘wound’, ‘trauma’ Instinct (hormē) 107, 107n30, 108 Instinctive 104, 106, 107, 111 Instinctual 109 Kinesis 179, 180, 186, 188

index of subjects Label 3, 18, 19 Language 211 (loss of), 265 (of emotional pain) Laughter 219–220, 241 (smiling) Law, Roman 67, 87, 88 Lexicon 286, 290 Lucian 130, 132n32 Lupē (λύπη) 15n15, 20, 21, 22 (plural), 23n43, 24n49 (cognates), 24n50, 30, 30n62, 30n65, 35, 36, 36n83 (opposite), 37, 88, 189, 192 (definitions), 193–196, 274–278, 281–286, 290, 291, 295 Manipulation 68 Marsyas 206–207, 208–216, 217, 218, 224 Martyrdom 206, 207, 221, 231, 270 Martyrs 216–224 (Vincent of Saragossa), 229–248 (Ignatius of Antioch), 234 (Blandina), 234 (Pamfilus), 245–246 (Maccabean), 255 (Stephen), 256 (Protasius and Gervasius), 260 (Paul) Mental 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22n41, 23n43, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36 Metaphor (and pain) 47, 48–50, 53n35, 56, 56n42, 58–59, 59n52, 162–163, 163n54, 164, 211, 277, 287, 287n60; see also ‘pain, communication’, ‘pain, terms for’ Miracle 255–256, 264, 265 Miscarriage 23 Misericordia 82, 85, 88, 284; see also ‘pity’ Modern pain questionnaires 145, 155n31, 156, 156n33, 157, 159; see also ‘pain’ Mutilation 71, 75–77, 82, 87–89, 92, 208, 211–212, 233, 240–241, 246; see also ‘injury’ Mysteries 126–132, 126n21, 127 (mystes), 135 Narrative 12, 29, 292, 293 Natural (vs. Unnatural) 21, 25 Nature (human) 98 Nature (phusis) 98 (polysemous) Nausea 29, 30 Noble death 236–237 Odunē (ὀδύνη) 15, 16, 16n21, n22, 17, 18, 19, 23n45, 24 (frequency in HC), 25, 26, 27, 286; see also appendix to Ch. 2 Odysseus 16, 17, 18, 19

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index of subjects Oikeiosis 106 Oratory 68, 69; see also ‘rhetoric’ Pain communication 66, 69, 276, 286, 295 complexity 176, 177, 178, 200 evil 106–107, 266, 267, 268, 277; see also ‘bad’ good 106 (matter for virtue), 114 (curbed by Providence), 268–269 (testimony to good); see also ‘good’ immunity to 221, 234 intensity (acute/chronic) 30, 124, 138, 126, 131, 155n31 (symptoms), 223, 263– 264, 276; see also ‘discomfort’ location 26, 28, 28n60, 48, 52n30, 54– 55, 148–158, 160–161, 171 mental 31, 211, 215–216, 219, 255, 261– 263 (relationship with physical –), 263 (importance); 276–277, 287–290, 291; see also ‘envy’, ‘grief’, ‘distress’, ‘suffering’ natural 99, 114 predilection for 231, 232–233, 239 premeditation 239–240, 242–243; see also ‘praemeditatio’ Stoic techniques 220n52, 222n59, 235, 239–241 terms for 20, 98–99 (difference between Greek and Latin), 211 (absence), 218 (absence), 233 (absence); for specific pain terms see also Greek and Latin terms (achthos, aegritudo, algos, dolor, lupē, odunē, ponos) training 235, 269 visionary 222–223, 225 visualisation 240–241, 246–247 Painlessness 221, 234, 268 Pains (sympathy) 18–19 Parents 85–88, 89 (critical role), 90 Passion 102 (unnatural), 110, 111 (prepassion), 112–113, 117 Passion-lists 274–275, 278–282, 293–294 Pathē 33 Pathos (sadness) 85 Pathos (πάθος) 234, 236, 247, 261–262 Patient 257, 259, 260, 264 Penelope 289 Perception 21–22, 27, 32, 33, 34, 35

Persuasion 67–68 Philebus 178, 191 Philoponia 196n64 Philoponos 196, 197, 198 Philosophy 98, 104, 117 Physical 14 (vs. Mental), 15, 17 (pain), 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33 (suffering), 36 Physiology 98, 99, 101, 113, 114 Pity 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 (self-centred), 283–284, 291, 294; see also ‘misericordia’ Plato 178, 180, 190, 191 Pleasure 178, 183, 187 Pleasure(s) 12, 12n2, 13n6, 20, 21, 22, 23, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37 Podagra (disease) 123, 132, 132n35, 133, 135, 138; (as Goddess) 126–129, 131, 135, 136, 138, see also: ‘illnesses’ Poena 209–210, 258, 259, 260, 261, 269; see also ‘punishment’ Polyphemus 19 Ponos (πόνος) 15, 17, 20, 23n45, 24 (Hippocratic use), 24n51, 25, 26, 28n60, 29, 34, 35, 189–191, 193–194, 195–198; see also appendix to Ch. 2 Posidonius 107 Praemeditatio 239–240, 242–243 Pressure (thlipsis) 191–192 Prometheus 79 Providence 99, 113, 114 Psychology 37 Punishment 209–210, 259, 260–261, 267, 269–270; see also ‘poena’ Rational choice theory 235–237 Rationality 238–239, 244 Reason 106, 108–109, 111–112, 113, 114, 117 Relics 255, 256 Rhetoric 77n59, 84; see also ‘oratory’ Sadism 78 Screaming 211; see also ‘wailing’ Self, obliteration of 211–212, 219, 224 Self-care 107 Seneca (minor) 98, 108, 109–110, 111, 112, 115, 233, 237, 239–242, 245 Sensation 99 (defines animal), 109 (of pain), 110–111, 113 Shock (ictus animi) 111, 111n45 Skin 218–219 (as barrier)

312 Slaves 82, 86, 87 Socrates 238, 243 Soul 220–221, 224, 261–263, 264, 265, 267; 277, 285 (blurring with body) Spectacle 212, 245 Speusippus 180 Stoicism 105, 106, 107, 108, 177n6, 183n29, 192n50, 193, 194, 201n75, 220n52, 222n59, 235, 239, 243, 245, 247, 263, 266, 274, 275, 277, 280, 282; see also ‘pain, Stoic techniques’ Stoics 183n29, 190, 192, 194n59, 221n57, 240n63, 278 Suasoriae 67 Suffering 98, 100, 109, 111, 114, 116 Supervenience 179, 182, 183–184, 186, 191, 194, 200 Surgery 257–258 Sympathy 69, 77, 80, 91n120, 215–216, 258, 283–284 Taste (and pain symptoms) 155, 162, 162n51, 163–166, 165n6, n63 Theophrastus 20–22 Therapy 243 Thersites 16

index of subjects Tormenta 80, 259 Torture 73–74, 77, 80, 80–81 (tools), 83– 84, 91, 205–206, 208 (tools), 216–217, 234 (endurance), 237–238, (choice to endure), 240 (types of), 240–241 (visualisation of), 241 (severity), 259 Transformation 207, 214–216, 223 Trauma 16, 32, 205–206 Tyrannicide 71, 73 Tyranny 74n38, 78, 80 Tyrant 67, 71, 77–78, 79, 81, 83, 84 Unnatural 112, 113, 113n59, 117 Violence 75, 78, 80, 81, 212, 217–218, 233, 240, 244–246 Virtue 100, 102, 103, 104, 106, 109, 115, 116, 176, 183, 188, 194, 195, 196–199, 245, 266, 266–267, 270 Wailing 19n30, 211, 257, 285, 294; see also ‘screaming’ Weeping 264 Wounds 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 211, 217, 220, 264, 268