Skip to Main Content

Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire

Online ISBN:
9780191924897
Print ISBN:
9780192898616
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire

Claire Bubb (ed.),
Claire Bubb
(ed.)
Assistant Professor of Classical Literature and Science, New York University
Find on
Michael Peachin (ed.)
Michael Peachin
(ed.)

Professor Emeritus of Classics

Former Professor of Classics, New York University
Find on
Published online:
22 June 2023
Published in print:
1 June 2023
Online ISBN:
9780191924897
Print ISBN:
9780192898616
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book juxtaposes the fields of medicine and law in the ancient Roman world and suggests that they were shaped thoroughly and idiosyncratically by the particular needs and desires of both their practitioners and their users. The volume approaches the study of these fields through three avenues. First, it argues that the literatures produced by elite practitioners, like Galen or Ulpian, were not merely utilitarian, but were pieces of aesthetically inflected literature and thus carried all of the disparate baggage linked to any form of literature in the Roman context. Second, while one element of that literary luggage was the socio-political competition that these texts facilitated among their authors, such high-stakes agonism also uniquely marked the quotidian practice of both medicine and law, resulting in both fields coming to function as forms of popular public entertainment. Finally, the effects of rhetoric and the deeply rhetorical education had by the elite made themselves constantly apparent in both the literature on and in the practice of medicine and law. Through case studies in both fields on these topics, together with contextualizing essays, the volume suggests that the blanket results of all this will have been profound. Ultimately, the book poses forward-looking questions: What things might ancient Roman medicine and law have been meant and/or geared to accomplish in their world? And how might the very substance of Roman medicine and law have been crafted with an eye to fulfilling those peculiarly ancient needs and desires?

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close