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RECONSTRUCTING THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF DISABILITY IN ANTIQUITY: A CASE STUDY FROM ROMAN EGYPT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2015

Jane Draycott
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Extract

Over the last thirty years, the development of disability studies as an academic discipline has in turn ensured that interest in disability in historical periods has steadily increased. Initially, scholars presented an overwhelmingly negative view of disability in antiquity, proceeding under the assumption that babies born displaying visible signs of deformity or disability were subjected either to infanticide or exposure, and that individuals who were subsequently identified as suffering from a deformity or disability, or developed either one later in life, were ostracized and unable to make any meaningful contribution to society. It is only over the last decade that this reductive approach has been gradually discredited, and the understanding of disability in antiquity has become increasingly nuanced. To date, one monograph has been published on deformity and disability in the Graeco-Roman world, one monograph on disability in the Greek world and one on disability in the Roman world, and one edited volume on disability in antiquity and another on disability in the Roman world. These have been complemented by investigations into disability in Judaism, Christianity and the Bible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , October 2015 , pp. 189 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Dr Liz Gloyn and G&R's anonymous reviewer for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Some of the material included here was presented at the Universities in Wales Institute of Classics and Ancient History's annual colloquium at Gregynog Hall in 2014, and at Royal Holloway, University of London's Department of Classics research seminar in 2015; I would like to thank those who attended these events for their questions and comments, and for the fruitful discussions that grew out of them.

All abbreviations of documentary papyri follow Duke University's Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets, <http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/clist.html>, accessed April 2015. The definition of disability utilized throughout this paper is that of the World Health Organization: ‘An umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations.’ See <http://www.who.int/topics/disabilities/en/>, accessed April 2015.

References

1 Kudlick, C., ‘Disability History: Why We Need an “Other”’, American Historical Review 108.3 (2003), 763–93CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

2 W. Southwell-Wright, ‘Past Perspectives: What can Archaeology offer Disability Studies?’, in M. Wappett and K. Arndt (eds.), Emerging Perspectives on Disability Studies (New York, 2013), 67–97. On disabled children in antiquity, see C. Laes, ‘Raising a Disabled Child’, in J. Grubbs, T. Parkin, and R. Bell (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (Oxford, 2013), 125–44.

3 R. Garland, The Eye of the Beholder. Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (London, 2010; first published 1995); M. L. Rose, The Staff of Oedipus. Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece (Ann Arbor, MI, 2013; first published 2003); C. Laes, Bepurkt? Gehandicapten in het Romeinse rijk (Leuven, 2014); R. Breitwieser (ed.), Behinderungen und Beeinträchtigungen/Disability and Impairment in Antiquity (Oxford, 2012); C. Laes, C. F. Goodey, and M. L. Rose (eds.), Disabilities in Roman Antiquity. Disparate Bodies a Capite ad Calcem (Leiden, 2013). Articles surveying the period include N. Kelley, ‘Deformity and Disability in Greece and Rome’, in H. Avalos, S. Melcher, and J. Schipper (eds.), This Abled Body. Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies (Atlanta, GA, 2007), 31–45. The remit and the terminology utilized with regard to impairment, disability, deformity, disfigurement, etc. varies according to author. Another useful resource is the Disability History and the Ancient World research network, which includes a comprehensive and regularly updated subject bibliography, available at <http://www.disability-ancientworld.com/index.htm>, accessed April 2015.

4 Ohry, A. and Dolev, E., ‘Disabilities and Handicapped People in the Bible’, Koroth 8.5–6 (1982), 63–7Google Scholar; J. Abrams, Judaism and Disability. Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli (Washington, DC, 1998); Avalos, Melcher, and Schipper (n. 3); S. Fishbane (ed.), Deviancy in Early Rabbinic Literature. A Collection of Socio-anthropological Essays (Leiden, 2008); S. Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible. Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences (Cambridge, 2008); N. Kelley, ‘The Deformed Child in Ancient Christianity’, in C. Horn and R. Phenix (eds.), Children in Late Ancient Christianity (Tübingen, 2009), 199–216.

5 Such approaches have recently been critiqued by Southwell-Wright (n. 2), 78–9.

6 The use of retrospective diagnosis to elucidate health in antiquity has been subject to a significant amount of criticism over the last decade. See K.-H. Leven, ‘“At Times These Ancient Facts Seem to Lie Before Me Like a Patient on a Hospital Bed”: Retrospective Diagnosis and Ancient Medical History’, in H. F. J. Horstmanshoff and M. Stol (eds.), Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine (Leiden, 2004), 369–86; and L. A. Graumann, ‘Monstrous Births and Retrospective Diagnosis: The Case of Hermaphrodites in Antiquity’, in Laes, Goodey, and Rose (n. 3), 181–209.

7 M. Cross, ‘Accessing the Inaccessible: Disability and Archaeology’, in T. Insoll (ed.), The Archaeology of Identities. A Reader (Abingdon, 2007), 179, 186; J. Hubert, ‘Introduction: The Complexity of Boundedness and Exclusion’, in J. Hubert (ed.), Madness, Disability and Social Exclusion. The Archaeology and Anthropology of ‘Difference’ (Abingdon, 2000), 2. For discussion of how best to approach the disabled body in history and culture, and the importance of incorporating the perspectives of disabled scholars, see D. Mitchell and S. Snyder, ‘Introduction: Disability Studies and the Double Bind of Representation’, in D. Mitchell and S. Snyder (eds.), The Body and Physical Difference. Discourses of Disability (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997), 2. For a recent example of this approach to disability history, see the Wellcome Trust-funded project ‘All the King's Fools’, <http://www.allthekingsfools.co.uk/site/>, accessed April 2015; an interim report on this project is provided in Lipscombe, S., ‘All the King's Fools’, History Today, 61.8 (2011)Google Scholar, <http://www.historytoday.com/suzannah-lipscomb/all-king's-fools>, accessed April 2015. For the importance of considering the ordinary individual, and the use of bioarchaeological evidence in the form of a collection of disparate burials from the Via Collatina in Rome in order to do so, see E.-J. Graham, ‘Disparate Lives or Disparate Deaths? Post-mortem Treatment of the Body and the Articulation of Difference’, in Laes, Goodey, and Rose (n. 3), 249–74.

8 The closest we can get is ἀδύνατος – literally ‘unable’ – in Lys. 24; V. Wohl, ‘Rhetoric of the Athenian Citizen’, in E. Gunderson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric (Cambridge, 2009), 162–77 translates it as ‘disabled’, while Rose (n. 3), 95–8, disputes this translation and the resulting interpretation of the speech. See Rose (n. 3), 11–14, on the range of terms used in ancient Greek to refer to physical imperfection and impairment. Garland (n. 3), 4–7, discusses the terms used in ancient Greek and Latin to refer to physical abnormality. On the possibility that deformities and disabilities inspired ‘monstrous races’ in ancient mythology, see B. Gevaert and C. Laes, ‘What's in a Monster? Pliny the Elder, Teratology and Bodily Disability’, in Laes, Goodey, and Rose (n. 3), 223–4; on segregated communities consisting of individuals with disabilities, see ibid., 226–7. A couple of examples of the latter are attested in ancient literature: Gregory of Tours, Vita Andreae 32 (a blind community); August. De quantitate animae 18, 31 (a deaf-mute community).

9 On the ‘normal’ Roman body, see Graham (n. 7), 254–8.

10 Translation from J. Bostock and H. T. Riley (eds.), The Natural History of Pliny the Elder (London, 1855), available at <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text;jsessionid=6425065FBFAE26451FADE9B8F0A18FE1?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0137>, accessed April 2015. On prosthetic limbs in antiquity, see Bliquez, L., ‘Prosthetics in Classical Antiquity: Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Prosthetics’, ANRW 37.3 (1996), 2662–74Google Scholar, but all surviving Roman examples are either legs or feet, as opposed to arms or hands. On using a wound to one's advantage in popular rhetoric, see Leigh, M., ‘Wounding and Popular Rhetoric at Rome’, BICS 40.1 (1995), 195–215Google Scholar. On war wounds in antiquity as a sign of heroism and valour, see C. Salazar, The Treatment of War Wounds in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Leiden, 2000); with particular reference to the war wounds of kings, see E. Samama, ‘A King Walking with Pain? On the Textual and Iconographical Images of Phillip II and Other Wounded Kings’, in Laes, Goodey, and Rose (n. 3), 231–48. On the extent to which this account of Marcus Sergius Silus is subject to Pliny's own personal moral and philosophical outlook, see M. Beagon, ‘Beyond Comparison: M. Sergius Silus, Fortunae Victor’, in G. Clark and T. Rajak (eds.), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World. Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin (Oxford, 2002), 111–32.

11 Translation from B. Radice, The Letters of the Younger Pliny (London, 1963).

12 See Laes, C., ‘How Does One Do a History of Disability in Antiquity? One Thousand Years of Case Studies’, Medicina nei Secoli Arte e Scienza 23.3 (2011), 915–46Google ScholarPubMed for the possibility of exploring disability in antiquity through case studies which can be contextualized and, consequently, read on different levels, and Laes, C., ‘Unabling Zercon oder Disabled Zercon? Ein Nar an Attilas Hof’, Werkstatt Geschichte 65 (2013), 29–39Google Scholar for an additional individual case study.

13 Papyrological evidence has only recently begun to be systematically incorporated into discussions of disability in antiquity, see Laes (n. 3). On disabled individuals and disability in papyri, see P. Arzt-Grabner, ‘Behinderungen und Behinderte in den griechischen Papyri’, in Breitwieser (n. 4), 47–55; G. Cernuschi, Nuovi contributi per lo studio dei connotati personali nei documenti dell'egitto greco-romano (Padua, 2010); Nachtergael, G., ‘Papyrologica. II.’, Chronique d’Égypte 80.159–60 (2005), 244–5Google Scholar; S. Strassi, ‘Nomi parlanti nell'Egitto greco e romano’, Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses (Berlin, 1995 and 1997), 922–30. A number of papyri refer to individuals using their disabilities as distinguishing features, presumably as a means of ensuring/confirming identification: see for example P.Mich. V 293 (early first century ad, Tebtunis), which refers to ‘Apynchis the so-called deaf-mute’; P.Mich. V 325 (ad 47, Tebtunis), which refers to ‘the lame Heraklous’; P.Mich. inv. 4172 (ad 173–4, Karanis), which refers to ‘Maximus the leper’; P.Mich. XII 651 (ad 360, Karanis), which refers to ‘Nilos, dumb’.

14 For discussion of the documentary papyri from the archive, see Biezunska-Malowist, I., ‘La famille du vétéran romain C. Iulius Niger de Karanis’, Eos 49 (1957), 155–64Google Scholar; and R. Alston, Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt. A Social History (London, 1995), 129–32. See also the entry in Papyrus Archives in Graeco-Roman Egypt, <www.trismegistos.org/archive/90>, accessed April 2015.

15 P.Mich. VI 423–4.

16 SB XII 11114, a legal petition. Alston (n. 14), 130–1, believes that Gaius Gemellus Horigenes was attempting to claim Roman citizenship through his grandfather, rather than through the Constitutio Antoniniana of ad 212, as a means of inflating his status.

17 P.Mich. VI 370, a census declaration dated to ad 189.

18 R. S. Bagnall and B. W. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (Cambridge, 2006), 1, 90 (female life expectancy), 100 (male life expectancy). Unfortunately, analysis of this evidence does not provide anything like a complete picture of the population of Roman Egypt as the vast majority of the census returns come from three nomes out of fifty (the Arsinoite, the Oxyrhynchite, and the Prosopite) and date from the second century ad, but the limitations of the material are made perfectly clear and are taken into account throughout the analysis. See also S. Huebner, The Family in Roman Egypt. A Comparative Approach to Intergenerational Solidarity and Conflict (Cambridge, 2013), 21–8, on the strengths and weaknesses of this material with regard to investigating the Romano-Egyptian family.

19 According to the calculations of Bagnall and Frier (n. 18), 146, the average age of paternity was thirty-nine. On the question of the age of marriage of males in Graeco-Roman Egypt, see A. Pudsey, ‘Nuptiality and the Demographic Life Cycle of the Family in Roman Egypt’, in C. Holleran and A. Pudsey (eds.), Demography and the Graeco-Roman World. New Insights and Approaches (Cambridge, 2011), 60–98. According to Pudsey, marriage was ‘near universal’, with men usually marrying in their early twenties, half of men marrying by the age of twenty-five, and seventy per cent by their mid-forties. Men were also much more likely than women to remarry after the death of a spouse. See also Huebner (n. 18), 48, on marriage patterns in Roman Egypt, and ibid., 94–7, on remarriage after the death of a spouse.

20 These petitions have been the subject of scholarly attention on several previous occasions, albeit for different reasons each time. See Alston (n. 14), 129–32, for discussion of the Roman army veteran community in the village of Karanis in Egypt; Frankfurter, D., ‘Fetus Magic and Sorcery Fears in Roman Egypt’, GRBS 46 (2006), 37–62Google Scholar, and Bryen, A. Z. and Wypustek, A., ‘Gemellus'; Evil Eyes (P.Mich. VI 423–424)’, GRBS 49 (2009), 535–55Google Scholar, for discussion of the use of magic; and J. L. Draycott, Approaches to Healing in Roman Egypt (Oxford, 2012), 64–6, for discussion of eye conditions in Egypt.

21 The first petition, P.Mich. VI 422, was written by an individual named Sabinus; the second petition, P.Mich.VI 423, does not name the scribe; the third petition, P.Mich. VI 425, was written by individuals named Germanus and […] son of Panebtichis; the fourth petition, P.Mich. VI 426, does not name the scribe. See W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1989), particularly 5–7, for the difficulty in differentiating between ‘literate’, ‘semi-literate’, and ‘illiterate’, and ‘cultured’ and ‘uncultured’ in Graeco-Roman antiquity. On education and literacy in Roman Egypt, see R. Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, NJ, 2001). On the literary papyri included among the documents of the family's archive, see van Minnen, P., ‘Boorish or Bookish? Literature in Egyptian Villages in the Fayum in the Graeco-Roman Period’, JJP 28 (1998), 111, 132Google Scholar. Gaius Julius Niger was in the habit of signing his own petitions: see SB XXIV 16252.33–4.

22 See A. Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt. A Study in Legal Interpretation (Philadelphia, PA, 2013), 4–5, for discussion of the extent to which petitioners exaggerated their circumstances in order to maximize their petitions’ possibilities of success when seeking recompense for interpersonal violence.

23 P.Mich. VI 422. For the full Greek text and English translation, see <http://www.papyri.info>, accessed April 2015. All translations of the papyri are taken from this source.

24 P.Mich. VI 422.20–30. In a subsequent document, P.Mich. VI 398, a tax receipt dated to ad 207, Julius is included as a tenant farmer of Gaius Gemellus Horigenes, but whether he was a tenant farmer at this point in time is unfortunately unknown.

25 P.Mich. VI 423–4.

26 P.Mich. VI 423–4.7–23.

27 For discussion of this incident, the only surviving first-hand example of an appeal to Roman imperial administrators to resolve a situation involving magic, see Frankfurter (n. 20). For further discussion of this incident, and the suggestion that the form of magic utilized, with its connotations of the evil eye, was related to Gaius Gemellus Horigenes’ visual impairment, see Bryen and Wypustek (n. 20), 549–52. On the evil eye, see Plut. Mor. 680C–83B and Heliod. Aeth. 3.7–9, both of which are discussed in Dickie, M., ‘Plutarch and Heliodorus on the Evil Eye’, CPh 86.1 (1991), 17–29Google Scholar.

28 P.Mich. VI 423–4.23–6.

29 P.Mich. VI 425.

30 N. Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman Rule (Oxford, 1983), 161. There are numerous ancient literary references that present tax collectors in a very negative light: see, for example, Matthew 9:10; Mark 2:16; Luke 3:12–14, 5:30, 7:34; Philo, Leg. 3.30. Documentary papyri attest the same: see, for example, P.Sakaon 41/P.Ryl. IV 659 (ad 323/4).

31 P.Mich. VI 425.12–14.

32 P.Mich. VI 426.

33 Lewis (n. 30), 180–1. See for example, P.Phil. 1/P.Oxy. VIII 1119 (ad 244, Oxyrhynchus).

34 See for example P.Wisc. II 81 (ad 143, Karanis).

35 On visual impairments in the Roman world, see L. Trentin, ‘Exploring Visual Impairment in Ancient Rome’, in Laes, Goodey, and Rose (n. 3), 89–114. On eye medicine in the Roman world, see Jackson, R., ‘Eye Medicine in the Roman Empire’, ANRW 37.3 (1996), 2228–51Google Scholar. On ophthalmology in Roman Egypt, see M.-H. Marganne, L'ophtalmologie dans l'Egypte gréco-romaine d'après les papyrus littéraires grecs (Leiden, 1994).

36 Trentin (n. 35), 95–106.

37 For acknowledgement of the role that status, class, and wealth could play in altering someone's experience of disability, see C. Laes, C. F. Goodey, and M. L. Rose, ‘Approaching Disabilities a capite ad calcem: Hidden Themes in Roman Antiquity’, in Laes, Goodey, and Rose (n. 3), 8. See also Trentin (n. 35), 108–11, with specific reference to visual impairment.

38 Alston (n. 14), 131.

39 However, Gaius Gemellus Horigenes includes information about his visual impairment in official documents that are not petitions. See for example SB IV 7360, a declaration of land holdings dated to 4 March AD 214, in which he denotes himself as having weak vision (τῇ ὄψει ἀσθενής).

40 P.Mich. VI 425.23–4.

41 See M. L. Edwards, ‘Constructions of Physical Disability in the Ancient Greek World: The Community Concept’, in Mitchell and Snyder (n. 7), 35–50; M. L. Edwards, ‘Deaf and Dumb in Ancient Greece’, in L. Davis (ed.), The Disability Studies Reader (London, 1997), 29–51; and Rose (n. 3). On disabled children, see Laes, C., ‘Learning from Silence: Disabled Children in Roman Antiquity’, Arctos 42 (2008), 85–122Google Scholar; C. Laes (n. 3). See also Graham (n. 7), 249.

42 R. Garland, ‘The Mockery of the Deformed and the Disabled in Graeco-Roman Culture’, in S. Jäkel and A. Timonen (eds.), Laughter Down the Centuries (Turku, 1994), i.71–84; Trentin, L., ‘Deformity in the Roman Imperial Court’, G&R 58.2 (2011), 195–208Google Scholar.

43 See Ael. VH 12.43: ‘The son of Philippos, Antigonos who was one-eyed, and therefore called the Cyclops’; see also Plaut. Curc. 392–400: ‘I suppose that you are of the family of the Coclites; for they are one-eyed’.

44 Garland (n. 42), 74.

45 Hom. Il. 1.600; Hor. Sat. 1.5.50–70; Plut. Mor. 621E; SHA Heliogab. 29.3. In Apul. Met. 2.30, the disfigured Thelyphron is mocked as an offering to the god of laughter. See also Garland (n. 42), 81–3.

46 Cic. De or. 2.239.

47 Ibid., 2.249.

48 Philostr. V A 4.10.

49 On the scapegoating of the disabled, see W. Southwell-Wright, ‘Perceptions of Infant Disability in Roman Britain’, in M. Carroll and E-J. Graham (eds.), Infant Health and Death in Roman Italy and Beyond (Portsmouth, RI, 2014), 111–31.