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The Life And Death Of Asclepiades Of Bithynia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Elizabeth Rawson
Elizabeth Rawson
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

It can be argued that there was no intellectual figure at work in Rome in the period of the late Republic who had more originality and influence than the Bithynian doctor Asclepiades, who founded an important medical school and was still being attacked nearly three hundred years after his death by Galen, and two hundred years later still by Caelius Aurelianus. His claims to originality rested both on his theory of the causes of disease, and on his methods of treatment. Turning away from the Empiricism recently fashionable, he argued that experience without λόγoς, theory or reason, was useless. His own theory was based on the scientific ideas of the late fourth-century philosopher Heraclides Ponticus, and seems to have postulated not ἂτoμα, tiny indivisible particles, but ὂγκoι, masses, which are continually in motion and splitting into innumerable fragments, θραύσματα, of different shapes and sizes, which re-form to create perceptible bodies. The particles were separated by invisible gaps, πόρoι or pores; friction between particles created the heat of the human body, but jamming of its pores was often the cause of pain and disease. This purely mechanistic doctrine was anathema to Galen because of its insufficient reverence for the doctrines of Hippocrates, and above all for the belief in the sympathy of the various parts of the body, the purposive character of Nature's creation, and her own healing effort; and also for the doctrine of the four, or more, humours.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , December 1982 , pp. 358 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

1 Comparatively modern accounts of Asclepiades’ life are to be found in Raynaud, A. G. M., De Asclepiade Bithyno medico ac philosopho (1862), M. Wellmann, RE 2. 1632, s.v. Asclepiades (39), and ‘Google ScholarAsklepiades aus Bithynien von einem herrschenden Vorurteil befreit’, NJ f.d. Kl. Alt. 21 (1908), 684;Google ScholarVilas, H.v., Der Arzt u. Philosoph Asklepiades von Bithynien (1903);Google ScholarAllbutt, T. C., Greek Medicine in Rome (1921);Google Scholar and Benedum, J., ‘Der Badearzt Asklepiades und seine Bithynische Heimat’, Gesnerus 35 (1978), 20. There are numerous shorter accounts in the histories of medicine and the classical encyclopaedias, mostly very inaccurate, and obiter dicta are legion. There have also been a number of recent articles on medicine in Rome in the late Republic, none of any value.Google Scholar

2 Obviously in the long run Cicero's intellectual influence was far greater, but in the shorter term it was probably his stylistic influence that was most marked.

3 See H. B. Gottschalk, Heracleides of Pontus (1980), pp. 37 ff.

4 HN 26. 12–20.

5 Id. ib. 7. 124.

6 Proem 3 (Helmreich).

7 HN 25. 6. Pliny also lists Asclepiades ‘the doctor’ among his sources for a number of his books (7, 11, 14, 15, 20, 21–2, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27), including all those which deal with plants; he draws on Asclepiades for information about vines and wine, but also other plants and their properties. It is interesting, however, that Asclepiades is not used in the books dealing with drugs from animal or mineral sources. (There can be no doubt that Pliny is quoting the Bithynian; he does not know the Asclepiades, of perhaps about his own date, called ‘the Younger’ or Pharmakion, who wrote particularly on drugs.)

HN 25.7 possibly suggests, though strictly speaking Pliny does not imply it, that Asclepiades’ work dedicated to Mithridates was translated (or rather adapted, it seems) into Latin with the other treatises found among the King's property, by Pompey's freedman Lenaeus. There is no evidence at all, and no likelihood, that any of his other writings were available in Latin.

8 Galen 14. 683 K. So Kühn, but the fifteenth-century Bodleian MS at least (D'Orville 3) has the Ionic form κιηνός Dr J. Harig-Kollesch kindly confirms that the manuscripts of which the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum in E. Berlin has films or photographs (including Vat. 1843 of the thirteenth century) read Πρoυσιάς or Πρoυσίας she points out that ευ in minuscle can easily be read as α.

9 Polybius 15. 22; Strabo C564. Polybius, and Livy following him, continue to write of Cius rather than Prusias; it returned officially to its old name in the time of Claudius - D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (1950), p. 1189. It is thus not surprising that pseudo-Galen chooses to identify Asclepiades by both names.

10 Strabo, loc. cit. and C566. Benedum (n. 1) recognizes that Asclepiades must have been born in Prusias but tries to argue that antiquity was already uncertain about his origin and he therefore perhaps at least held the citizenship of Prusa. But the fact that two fifteenth-century MSS of Strabo carry Πρoυσαεύς is wholly insignificant. One is o, of a class all members of which are ‘dépourvus de valeur’ (G. Aujac, Budé ed. l (1969), p. lxiv), the other z, which shows ‘frequent omissions … arbitrary readings that depart freely from the paradosis’ (A. Diller, The Textual Tradition ofStrabo's Geography (1975), p. 119).

11 Synesius, Dio 41D; Photius, Bibliotheca no. 209; Suidas s.v. Δίων ό Πασικράτoυς (no textual problems). It is worth observing that Dio, anxious to praise Prusa for everything that he can, never mentions a connection with Asclepiades.

12 Pliny, HN 7. 124; Pliny the Younger, Epp. 10, 17a. 3, 17b. 2, 23, 24, 58. 3, 71.

13 Head, Historia Numorum 513, 517–18.

14 IG xiv 1077 = CIL vi 1508. See for protests against confusion L. Robert, Études Déeliennes, BCH Suppl. 1 (1973), 437 n. 13 (cf Hellenica 2. 98 n. 1).

15 Men from Prusa who bore the name Asclepiades in imperial times are thus unlikely to be related to the Bithynian doctor, pace Wellmann, article in n. 1.

16 Strabo C564.

17 Cicero, De nat. deor. 1. 123, familiaris omnium nostrum, cf. 2. 88, familiaris noster, and De fin. 1. 6, familiarem nostrum; Adfam. 13. 20, Asclapone Patrensi medico utor familiariter, eiusque cum consuetudo mihi iucunda fuit tum ars etiam, quam sum expertus in valetudine meorum. The passages concerning Posidonius make it probable that nos in the De oratore quotation means ‘we’ not ‘I’. If Asclepiades was doctor to all Crassus’ circle, one wonders if he was responsible for the famous operation on Marius’ varicose veins (Plut. Mar. 6. 3, HN 11. 252); for Marius’ son was married well before 91 to L. Crassus’ daughter. Though not primarily a surgeon, Asclepiades did recognize that surgical intervention was sometimes necessary. However, we do not know the date of Marius’ operation, which might be after Asclepiades’ death.

18 HN 7. 124, 25. 6.

19 See my ‘Cicero the Historian and Cicero the Antiquarian’, JRS 62 (1972), 33, and Brunt, P. A., ‘Cicero and Historiography’, Misc. di Stud. Class, in honore di E. Manni 1 (1980?), 311; this should no longer be controversial.Google Scholar

20 See my ‘L. Crassus and Cicero: the Formation of a Statesman’, PCPS 197 (1971), 75.

21 A. Cocchi, Discorso primo sopra Asclepiade (1758, Eng. trans. 1762), not reprinted in Discorsi Toscani (1761), but in his collected Opere (1824); English version also in Green, R. M., Asclepiades: His Life and Writings (1955), which also reprints the very incomplete Asclepiadis Bithyni Fragmenta of C. G. Gumpert (1794). Cocchi spent three years in England, knew Newton, and turned down a job offered him by the Princess of Wales, returning to teach and work in Tuscany, where he became known as ‘il filosofo Mugellano’. Both doctor and classical scholar, he was responsible for the first edition of the novel of Xenophon of Ephesus (collations and other evidences of his work on the Greek romances remain in the Bodleian), published in London in 1726. His Discorso on Asclepiades is learned and often penetrating, though over-enthusiastic about his subject's moral virtues; his pure Tuscan was much admired in his own time as a model for scientific writing.Google Scholar

22 Pliny, HN 26. 16; 9. 168. For Orata see also Cicero, Hort. fr. 68 Grilli, Val. Max. 9. 1. 1, Macrobius, Sat. 3. 15. J. Benedum, ‘Die Balnea Pensilia des Asklepiades von Prusa’, Gesnerus 24 (1967), 93. Balneae pensiles appear to have been heated from below.

23 The King's doctor Papias was one of his πρ***τoι πίλoι and πεταγμένoς ⋯πί τ***ν ⋯νακρίσεων (OGIS 374; cf. J. Benedum, RE Suppl. XIV 367); Metrodorus of Scepsis, the polymath (not, however, the doctor and pharmacologist used by Pliny), rose to high legal office and was called ‘the King's Father’, Strabo C609, Plutarch, Luc. 22. Note that the Alexandrian doctor Zopyrus, a distinguished pharmacologist, sent Mithridates an account of an antidote to poison that he had invented, asking the King to experiment with it on criminals (Galen 14.150 K; cf. Scrib. Larg. 69 Helmreich).

24 HN 26. 12, cf. 22. 128. Note 25. 5–7, associating Pompey and Mithridates (and referring to Asclepiades).

25 Caelius Aurelianus, Morb. Chron 2. 110; Plut. Pomp. 2. 3, 16. 4. F. Münzer, RE s.v. Geminius (3) regards Antony's friend (Plut. Ant. 59) as a separate and younger man.

26 Plut. Mar. 36. 1, 38. 1; ILLRP 60, 132, 721, 724, 727, 858-from Praeneste, Cora, Minturnae, Capua and Delos.

27 Against the Logicians 1. 201–2.

28 So Cocchi; cf. Luck, G., Der Akademiker Antiochos (1953);Google ScholarDillon, J., The Middle Platonists (1977), p. 59 does not commit himself.Google Scholar I find no discussion in Glucker, J., Antiochus and the Late Academy (1978).Google Scholar

29 Celsus, proem 11; Deichgraber, K., Die griechische Empirikerschule2 (1965), p. 258. For the rest, Asclepiades is known to have said that the Britons’ cold climate led them to live a hundred years (Plut. Epit. 5.30; see H. Diels, Doxog. Graec. 443–4), and it has been suggested that this will have been written after Caesar's invasion; on the contrary, Asclepiades probably could not have made this statement when Britain was better known, and is simply contrasting Britons and Ethiopians as living in the most extreme climates possible. No one should be misled by the Latin translation in Kühn's Galen into thinking that Asclepiades criticized the terminology regarding the pulse used by Athenaeus of Attaleia, who was probably a pupil of Posidonius and thus doubtless active some time around the middle of the first century B.C.; the Greek text makes it clear, by using the future tense, that Galen is simply putting objections into the mouth of Asclepiades (8. 646 K).Google Scholar

30 HN 29. 6: auditor eius Themison fuit, segue inter initia adscripsit illi, mox procedente vita sua et placita mutavit, sed et ilia Antonius Musa eiusdem [auditor].

31 Cael. Aurel. Morb. Acut. 2. 84: libris quos periodicos dixit, adhuc quidem in iuventute constitutus, nec dum [necdum <enim> Wellmann, Hermes 57 (1922), 397] Asclepiades in libris suis eos discreverat. [Galen] 14. 648 K does not prove Themison a direct pupil.

32 Celsus, proem 11; but cf. 7 proem 3, nuper Tryphon pater: this man was probably active in the early first century A.D., and is perhaps Scribonius Largus’ praeceptor (Diller, RE VII A. 1, Tryphon no. 28). Also proem 69: ingeniosissimus saeculi nostri medicus, quem nuper vidimus, Cassius.

33 See n. 30. Modern scholars vary widely as to Themison's date, often said to be Augustan; but L. Edelstein, RE Suppl. vi 358 s.v. Methodiker (= his Ancient Medicine (1967), 173) and F. Kudlien, Kl. Pauly v 677 put him well into the first century A.D., which is quite impossible; the former holds on the basis of Cael. Aurel. Morb. Acut. 1. 16. 165 that Themison borrowed from the Methodists (and so was influenced by Nero's doctor Thessalus). But Caelius is surely confused here. (HN 25. 77–80 do not prove that Juba and Musa, who lived patrum nostrum aetate, are earlier than Themison; Pliny is arranging his discussion by plants, not by the dates of those discussing their use.)

34 Steph. Byz. s.v. Δυρράχιoν mentions Philonides of that town, who practised and wrote extensively, and Nicon of Acragas, probably the Nicon of Cic. ad fam. 7. 20. 3, author of a work on diet and perhaps the teacher of one Sex. Fadius (possibly of Veleia in south Italy, which was well-known as a health resort). Cicero mentions Nicon's book περί πoλνπαγίας and remarks o suavem medicum; this does perhaps suggest the Asclepiadean. Stephanus further mentions T. Aufidius ∑ικελός named by Caelius Aurelianus as a sectator of Asclepiades (Morb. Acut. 2. 29. 158 and Morb. Chron. 3. 78). There was a T. Aufidius in Cicero's time who began his career as a publicanus but rose to the praetorship (Val. Max. 6. 9. 7); the doctor, if genuinely a Sicel, might have owed his Roman citizenship to this man or a relation; Aufidii are also found in business in the East. ILLRP 799, from Lucania, concerns a doctor, born Menecrates of Tralles, who describes himself as πυσικός o?νoδότης, which as Degrassi notes ad loc. suggests an early follower of Asclepiades.

35 HN 26. 12.

36 See Ad. Wilhelm, Neue Beiträdge IV 54–5 for the ⋯κρoάσεις in the gymnasium at Perge by the local doctor Asclepiades son of Myron: πoλλά χρήσιμα διατέθειται ⋯ν αὐτo***ς πρòς ?γείαν τo***ς πoλίταις He received honours also in Seleucea on Calycadnus, and had lectured there too. In SEG III no. 416, from Elateia, ⋯κρo?σεις is a probable supplement. For published ⋯κρo?σεις (on the pulse) by the distinguished Baccheius of Tanagra, from the later third century B.C., Galen 8. 732, 749 K. Athenaeus of Attaleia, in the first century B.C. (ap. Oribasius, Coll. Med. IV (Libri Incerti) CMG VI 2. 2. 139–141 Raeder) thought all should study medicine as part of the ⋯γκ?κλιoς παιδεία the fragment is perhaps itself from a lecture (it is at all events in rhetorical style), Kudlien, F., Der griechische Arzt im Zeitalter des Hellenismus (1979), p. 50.Google Scholar

37 Bull. Ep. (1958), no. 336, a doctor from Istros lectures at Cyzicus and gets a public post (cf. the military engineer who lectured on arriving at Rhodes and was given an official job, displacing the incumbent, Vitruv. 10. 16. 3). Galen's public demonstrations in Rome date from his first visit, 14. 612 K ff. There were no public posts at Rome; Asclepiades will simply have wanted to become known. Besides praising medicine he may have lectured on such general subjects as hygiene or the healthy life, on which he published, or on his physical theories.

38 HN 29. 12–14.

39 Cato and Hemina in HN passage cited in last note; cf. Plut. Cato Mai. 23. 3.

40 Frr. 127–8 Swoboda; cf. HN 29. 138, 30. 83–4.

41 For this view see Susemihl, F., Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit II (1892), p. 428, and sources there quoted.Google Scholar

42 Wellmann, article cited in n. 1; our Asclepiades might be the Asclepiades Andreaefilius on a list of doctors published by Wellmann in Hermes 35 (1900), 370, and this Andreas might be the Andreas who held views on the soul similar to those of Asclepiades of Bithynia (Tertullian, De Anima 15). But there is a third-century B.C. doctor called Andreas, and doctors called Asclepiades are legion. Pliny's e levissima gente has of course nothing to do with family descent, but reflects Roman contempt for Asiatic Greeks; cf. Cicero, pro Mace. 65. (H. v. Vilas also misreads Strabo C566 to provide Asclepiades with a family.)

43 Caelius Aurel. Morb. Acut. 2. 129 (Parium, not Paros as in Drabkin's translation); another case at Parium, ap. Oribasius, Coll. Med. iii CMG VI 2. 1 256 R.

44 Galen, De Fac. Nat. 3. 7. 166 (Brock).

45 Strabo C157, C166. Listing famous Bithynians at C566 he omits Asclepiades the Myrlean, but this is hardly evidence that he was the same man as ⋯ Πρoυσιεύς, whom Strabo firmly calls ἰατρός and nothing else. (Meineke supplemented the text to get both men in.) Gumpert (op. cit. in n. 21) gave currency to the notion that Pliny confused the two (he also sowed confusion over Asclepiades’ birthplace by maintaining that Prusias (Cius) was in Mysia, not Bithynia; but it was part of the Kingdom of Bithynia in Asclepiades’ day).

46 W. J. Slater, ‘Asklepiades and Historia’, GRBS 13 (1972), 317. His argument that the grammarian's use of historia is influenced by the medical sense of the word, and especially by the Dogmatic sect's criticism of the Empirics’ reliance on case-histories, hardly compels the identification, though Asclepiades of Prusias was certainly no Empiric.

47 Writing separately de grammaticis and de rhetoribus, as other writers do.

48 Wellmann, RE 2. 1632 s.v. Asclepiades (39).

49 Wentzel, RE 2. 1628, s.v. Asclepiades (28);Muller, B. A., De Asclepiade Myrleano (1903).Google Scholar

50 Apart from the old-established temple at Pergamum, there were in the imperial period shrines at Nicomedeia (Paus. 3. 3. 8) and Poemanum in Mysia (Ael. Arist. Oral. 50. 3-ἅγιόν τεκαί ⋯νoμαστόν His worship is also attested then by coins and inscriptions in numerous other cities, including Prusias (Cius) - Bosch, C., Die kleinasiatischen Münzen der römischen Kaiserzeit (1935), pp. 106, 154. Of the men called Asclepiades registered in RE, note esp. nos. 18, 40, 46, 49, 50.Google Scholar

51 Ed. and tr. R. Walzer (1944).

52 HN 26. 12: huc se repente convertit…qui nee id egisset nec remedia nossel oculis usuque percipienda.

53 Strabo C588.

54 HN27. 14 ipse cognominari se frigida [sc. aqua] danda praeferens ut auctor ait M. Varro. Cf. Wellmann, second article in n. 1.

55 Bücheler, 440 ff.

56 Bücheler, 447: tu medicum te audes dicere, cum in eborato lecto ac purpureo peristromo cubare videos aegrotum et eius prius alvurn quam τύλην subducere mavis? The text is very uncertain, but probably does not contain a panegyric of Asclepiades’ gentle methods, as Wellmann thought, but rather one of Varro's diatribes, frequent in the Satires, against modern luxury.

57 It is not mentioned by Celsus, but may be by Pliny, a less technical author where medicine is concerned than Celsus: see Capitani, U., ‘Celso, Scribonio Largo, Plinio il Vecchio e il loro atteggiamento nei confronti della medicina popolare’, Maia 24 (1972), 120.Google Scholar

58 Notably Messala de valetudine, but to some extent Catus de liberis educandis as the fragments show, and possibly Orestes de insania. Varro also wrote three books De valetudine tuenda, and the Hebdomades perhaps included doctors among the famous men of whom portraits and brief notices were given.

59 Especially Med. Exp. (see n. 51) 1–2 and 13. 6.

60 HN 7. 124, 26. 15.

61 HN 7. 175; see Heraclides Ponticus’ dialogue περί τ***ς ἄπνoυ (Gottschalk, op. cit. in n. 3, 13).

62 Celsus 2. 6. 15; Apuleius, Florida 19 (calling Asclepiades the greatest doctor after Hippocrates, an exaggeration perhaps only current in Rome - cf. Celsus 1. 10, Pliny, HN 7. 124).

63 Garofalo, B., ‘Lettera intorno a un Busto di Asclepiade’, Giornale de’ Letterati d'Italia 11 (1712), 235.Google Scholar

64 Photographs in Richter, G. M. A., The Portraits of the Greeks (1965), fig. 2055;Google ScholarMajor, R. H., A History of Medicine I (1954), p. 177;Google ScholarBernoulli, J. J., Griechische Ikonographie II (1901), Taf. 26 (two views, one in profile). Engravings in Garofalo, Gumpert and other eighteenth-century sources, sometimes quite unrecognizable.Google Scholar

85 W. Helbig, Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom4 (1966), no. 1344.

66 H.P. L'Orange, Studien zur Geschichte des spätantiken Porträts (1933), p. 119 says that the head is ‘von entschieden ungriechischem Typus’. If we were to take this seriously we could reply that Prusias undoubtedly had a very mixed, perhaps mainly Bithynian population (note a reference to one Διυτίπoριν ∑κιρπάζιoς Πρoνoιέα, OGIS 341, though it is uncertain which Prusias he comes from).

67 Bernoulli and Richter (n. 64) hesitate between our Asclepiades and a man of the third century A.D., Bernoulli rather preferring the latter and Richter the former. It is usually assumed that the herm was found in a tomb, but Garofalo does not say and indeed clearly does not believe this. Herms of famous men were of course commonly used to decorate architectural complexes. (Mr R. R. R. Smith tells me that he thinks the head too typically third century to be a copy.)

68 Gottschalk (op. cit. in n. 3) pp. 56, 146.

69 It is probably wrong to see Panaetius’ modified Stoicism as produced for Roman consumption, rather than in reaction to the criticisms of the Sceptic Carneades and others; certainly his rejection of divination will not have been to Roman taste.

70 Plutarch, Aem. Paul. 28. 6. Only in the time of Diodorus Siculus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus had Rome become a good place for scholarly Greeks to work, i.e. after the Mithridatic Wars.

71 Habicht, C., Die Inschriften des Asklepeions, Altertümer von Pergamum VIII 3 (1964), pp. 15 ff: note Theodotus, who treated Aelius Aristides.Google Scholar Kudlien, op. cit. in n. 36, 123 suspects that there were also doctors attached in Hellenistic times (special library of the Asclepeion in Roman times: Deubner, O., Das Asklepeion von Pergamum (1938), pp. 40–3).Google Scholar See also Hanson, E. V., The Attalids of Pergamum (1971), p. 425. We know too that Menander of Pergamum was doctor to King Eumenes II (Syll. 655; cf. Suidas s.v. Λεσχίδης), possibly the doctor of that name who wrote a work used by Pliny in Bk 30 (1. 30) but not the Menander qui βιόχρηστα scripsit used for 19. 113 and elsewhere (see 1. 19–17); so Kroll, RE Suppl. VI 297. Another trusted doctor of Eumenes, Livy 45. 19. The distinguished doctors, e.g. Cleophantus, whose views Asclepiades is known to have followed on occasion, cannot on chronological grounds be direct teachers (apart possibly from the obscure Patron, Galen, Med. Exp. (see n. 51) 13).Google Scholar

72 Nor that they were taken up by Epicureans, though there have been attempts to trace a knowledge of his theories in Lucretius (esp. a theory of the magnet, Luck, W., Die Quellenfrage im 5 u.6 Buch des Lukrez, Diss. Breslau, 1932).Google Scholar Also now Pigeaud, J.,‘La physiologie de Lucrèce’, REL 58 (1980), 176. But see Gottschalk, op. cit. in n. 3, 55.Google Scholar

73 Op. cit. in n. 1. But all shrines of Asclepius may have practised hydrotherapy to some degree, L. Edelstein, Asclepius II 167; for Pergamum in the imperial period at least, R. Herzog, Philol. Suppl. 22 (1931), 156.

74 Strabo C580.

75 Scarborough, J., ‘The Drug Lore of Asclepiades of Bithynia’, Pharmacy in History 17 (1975) does not succeed in enriching our knowledge of Asclepiades’ life by endowing him with a criminal son-in-law, who rests on a misreading of Scribonius Largus (p. 3 Helmreich) and especially a mistake of genere for genero; the article also fails to distinguish sufficiently clearly between the Bithynian and Asclepiades ό νεωτερoς or Pharmakion. I am, however, grateful to Professor Scarborough for friendly interest and several references. I am much in debt to Dr Vivian Nutton, who kindly read this paper and made several helpful suggestions.Google ScholarPubMed