Medicine at the Agora (20 min)

Presenters

Susan Rotroff, Washington University in St. Louis

Abstract

The best known venues for the practice of medicine at Athens are its healing shrines, presided over by gods and heroes like Asklepios and Amynos. This paper, however, examines evidence for healing of a more prosaic nature, focusing on three deposits in and around the Agora.

The third-century B.C.E. fill of a cistern in the Poros Building, southwest of the Agora, included 13 small, pear-shaped containers, at one time interpreted as containers for hemlock and used to support the identity of the building as the state prison. The shape, however, was long ago associated with lykion, an ointment widely used for the treatment of diseases of the eye. The concentration of containers suggests that someone was dispensing the drug nearby.

The second deposit lay in a cistern in a residential neighborhood south of the Agora. Its contents include two pestles, several measuring vessels, and a pot specially designed for the medical practice of fumigation, known from the Hippocratic literature, thus pointing to the presence of a medical practitioner, who was active here around the year 100 B.C.E.

The last deposit is of a very different character, a mass of largely votive material deposited within the Crossroads Enclosure at the northern edge of the Agora and dating in the last quarter of the fifth century B.C.E. The enclosure, a heavy orthostate wall surrounding a large boulder, was excavated over 50 years ago but still resists a satisfying explanation. Among the hundreds of vessels found there is a Pheidias mug where a small section of the rim has been cut away, as though to accommodate a patient who has difficult drinking. Letters carefully inscribed around its neck read ΕΜΟΙ ΑΛΥΠΕΤΟΣ ΟΜΟΜΑ, probably referring to the narcotic action of the liquid the mug contained. Stones with healing properties are documented elsewhere in Greece, so it is possible that the boulder within the enclosure was associated with such benefits.