Classical Era (1000 b.c.e to 500 c.e) *

Introduction *

The Spirit of the Time *

Gender and Sexuality *

Children *

Treatment of Children as a Burden *

Treatment of Children as Disposable *

Treatment of Children as Sacrifice *

Treatment of Children as Sexual Objects *

Christian Culture *

Greece *

Rome *

Bodily Functional Difference *

Greece *

Existence *

Infanticide *

Rome *

Existence *

Attitudes to Bodily Imperfection *

Infanticide as an Answer to Imperfection *

Invalicide as an Answer to Imperfection *

Imperfection as Treatable *

Low Value Roles for the Imperfect *

Carthage *

Palestine *

Attitude to Imperfection *

Christianity *

Mental Difference- Mental Disorder *

Madness as Supernatural/Divine Intervention *

Madness as Physical Disfunction *

Madness as a Mixture Between Various Causes *

Social Treatment of Madness *

Greece *

Madness as a Mixture Between Various Causes *

Madness as Supernatural/Divine Intervention *

Madness as Physical Disfunction *

Madness as a Reaction to Social Stress *

Madness as ‘Just Deserts’ *

Social Treatment of Madness *

Rome: *

Madness as a Mixture Between Various Causes *

Madness as Supernatural Intervention *

Madness as a Reaction to Social Stress *

Madness as Physical Disfunction *

Social Treatment of Madness *

Palestine *

Existence of Madness *

Madness as Supernatural Intervention *

Madness as Behaviour *

Social Treatment of Madness *

Christianity *

Indian Subcontinent *

Mental Difference- Mental Impairment *

Greece *

Rome *

Jewish History *

Belief Difference *

Forensic Difference *

Greece: *

Bodily punishments: *

Patrimonial punishments: *

Moral Punishments: *

Assyrian Empire *

Palestine *

Rome: *

Social Difference *

Mesopotamia *

Egypt *

Palestine *

Persia *

India *

China *

Greece *

Rome *

Ethnic Difference *

Financial Difference *

Judaic Law *

Egypt *

Early Christianity *

The Aged *

Classical Era (1000 b.c.e to 500 c.e)

Introduction

Garland notes:

‘In classical antiquity as in later times the social response to the handicapped was in part determined by religion, since beauty and wholeness were regarded as a mark of divine favour, whereas ugliness and deformity were interpreted as a sign of the opposite. It made a difference too, whether disability was congenital or acquired in later life through disease, accident, warfare or debauchery.’

WRITE

The Spirit of the Time

Urbanisation continued with the eventual rise of City States. Laws were codified and history was written.

Stratification continued to become increasingly pervasive.

Winzer notes:

‘ For many centuries humans believed that there was a pantheon of Gods who lived in mountains or in trees or wherever, and that the afflictions of disabled persons were a visitation of divine or demonic origin’

WRITE

Gender and Sexuality

Garland notes:

‘Aristotle took a highly subjective and, in his case, thoroughly anthropocentric view of deformity by propounding the notion of a zoological hierarchy with men at the pinnacle and women one giant evolutionary step below – a step which, in his telling phrase, represented ‘the first step along the road to deformity’. (Galen 4.767b 7f)’

Ducey and Simon note:

‘The Roman matron had more freedom and respect than her Greek counterpart and does not appear to manifest that complex of penis envy, omnipotent control of children, and angry resentment…. Although women lacked political power, they seem to have had economic power. Furthermore, since Roman men customarily married, at age 30, women half their age, it is likely that many widows who had outlived their husbands attained great actual, if not nominal, power and prestige, either on their own account, or through honor bestowed on their deceased husbands, or because of their coveted position as wealthy marriageable widows.’

Garland notes that Livy records transexuality as a portent:

‘…Among the Sabine peoples one child was born of indeterminate sex… (31.12.6-8)’

Garland notes

‘Livy further tells us that ‘the most abhorred of all portents’ were the hermaphrodites, for whom distinctive rites of expiation were first introduced in 207 BC (27.11.4)’

Garland notes

‘Livy tells us that in the case of intersexuals the haruspices [Etruscan Diviners] laid it down that these be ‘banished from Roman territory, far from contact with her soil, and drowned in the sea.’ (27.37.6). The victims were placed alive in a sealed wooden box and cast into the sea.’

Garland notes

‘The fact that intersexuals were exposed at sea and not outside the city walls, the customary dumping ground for more conventional human rejects, is a sure signal of the extremity of loathing which such disconcerting Mischwesen or boundary-crossers aroused.

Garland notes that the importance of portents declined when the state was under less threat:

‘After 92 BC Livy provides no further reports of intersexual births. …Diodorus Siculus, Livy’s older contemporary, deplored the practice of burying intersexuals alive during the Social War in the early first century BC on the orders of the senate, describing them as people ‘whose nature was the same as everyone else’s and who are not monsters.’ However, even he concurred with the traditional view that the birth of an intersexual person is a portentous event, for he cites one such birth which occurred during the reign of Alexander Balas as portending the latter’s death (32.10.2, 8). Half a century later, Pliny the Elder observed that ‘hermaphrodites, who were formerly called androgynoi and regarded as portents, are now treated as pets.’ (NH 7.34).’

Culpin notes:

‘A Roman woman had few rights at law, and could not appear in court, vote, or become a magistrate. She could not own property and her inheritance rights were weak. In early times her husband had right of life or death over her. This situation improved slightly later, with women over 25 allowed to own property and the rights of widows and divorcees protected.’

Garland notes:

‘In general, it seems that the Greeks were far less hostile towards and fearful of, major terata than the Romans. This is reflected in the contrasting attitudes of the two cultures towards inter-sexuals, whom the Romans treated as abhorrent and accursed, and the Greeks as an unusual buts essentially routine part of nature.’

For Later:

Garland notes:

‘A similar range of attitude towards the phenomenon of inter-sexuality has been noted by anthropologists in the case of modern Americans, the Navaho Indians, and a Kenyan tribe known as the Pokot, who treat the condition respectively with horror, reverence, and as a simple error. (Referenced to Geertz citing RB Edgerton Pokot intersexuality: an East African exmaple of resolution of sexual incongruity American Anthropologist 68 1964 1288-99)

GATHER INFORMATION AND WRITE

Children

Lyman notes that the Roman/Greek assumption that surrounding tribes were less civilized is not necessarily the case:

‘Although it is exceedingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to acquire an accurate picture of these tribes before their contacts with Roman civilization, a few fragments of evidence hint at a less brutal and destructive attitude toward children than was the case with Rome.’

Treatment of Children as a Burden

Treatment of Children as Disposable

Treatment of Children as Sacrifice

Treatment of Children as Sexual Objects

de Mause notes:

‘The child in antiquity lived his earliest years in an atmosphere of sexual abuse. Growing up in Greece and Rome often included being used sexually by older men. In Crete and Boeotia, pederastic marriages and honeymoons were common. Abuse was less frequent among aristocratic boys in Rome, but sexual use of children was everywhere evident in some form. Boy brothels flourished in every city, and one could even contract for the use of a rent-a-boy service in Athens. Even where homosexuality with free boys was discouraged by law, men kept slave boys to abuse, so that even free-born children saw their fathers sleeping with boys.’

de Mause notes:

‘Plutarch said the reason why freeborn Roman boys wore a gold ball around their necks when they were young was so men could tell which boys it was not proper to use sexually when they found a group in the nude.’

de Mause notes:

‘Sexual abuse by pedagogues and teachers of smaller children may have been common throughout history.’

de Mause notes that legal strictures were placed on teachers to avoid the temptation to abuse children in their care.

de Mause notes:

‘The evidence from literature and art confirms this picture of the sexual abuse of smaller children. Petronius loves depicting adults feeling the ‘immature little tool’ of boys, and hisdescription of the rape of a seven-year-old girl, with women clapping in a long line around the bed, suggests that women were not exempt from playing a role in the process.’

de Mause notes:

‘Even the Jews, who tried to stamp out adult homosexuality with severe punishments, were more lenient in the case of young boys. Despite Moses’s injunction against corrupting children, the penalty for sodomy with children over 9 years of age was death by stoning, but copulation with younger children was not considered a sexual act, and was punishable only by a whipping., ‘as a matter of public discipline’.’

de Mause notes:

‘Suetonius condemned Tiberius because he ‘taught children of the most tender years, whom he called his little fishes, to play between his legs while he was in his bath. Those which had not yet been weaned, but were strong and hearty, he set at fellatio.’

de Mause notes:

‘The favorite sexual use of children, however, was not fellatio, but anal intercourse. Martial said one should, while buggering a boy, ‘refrain from stirring the groin with poking hand … nature has separated the male: one part has been produced for girls, one for men. Use your own part.’ This, he said, was because the masturbating of boys would ‘hasten manhood’.’

Christian Culture

Lyman notes:

‘The coming of Christianity certainly did not signal the end of the ‘dark ages’ for children, yet it may well have meant the beginning of a slightly less grim outlook.’

Bakan:

‘Christianity began with a holocaust of the Slaughter of the Innocents…from which Jesus is presumed to have (been) saved (Matthew 2:16).’

The text of the Slaughter of the Innocents from Matthew:

‘Matthew 2:16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

Matthew 2:17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,

Matthew 2:18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping [for] her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’

deMause notes :

‘The first place to look [for signs of empathetic parenting] is the Bible; certainly here one should find empathy towards children’s needs, for isn’t Jesus always pictured holding little children? Yet when one actually reads each of the over two thousand references to children listed in the Complete Concordance of the Bible, these gentle images are mssing. You find lots on child sacrifice, on stoning children, on beating them, on their strict obedience, on their love for their parents, and of their role as carriers of the family name, but not a single one that reveals any empathy with their needs. Even the well-known saying "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me" turns out to be the customary Near-Eastern practice of exorcising by laying on of hands, which many holy men did to remove the evil inherent in children: "Then were brought unto him little children, hat he should put his hands on them, and pray…he laid his hands on them, and departed thence." (Matt 19:13)’

Greece

deMause notes that Euripides (Ion 504) noted that children were exposed on hills and roadsides "a prey for birds, food for wild beasts to rend."’

DATE OF EURIPIDES

Garland notes:

‘… the incidence of persons suffering from postnatally acquired disabilities and deformities would have been extremely high. In the larger urban centres particularly, the combined difficulty of removing human waste and supplying uncontaminated water greatly facilitated the spread of cholera, typhus, and the plague bacillus, diseases which in any given year would have rendered a large percentage of the population either disabled or disfigured or both. Likewise a variety of viral diseases such as meningitis, measles, mumps, scarlet fever and smallpox afflicted many individuals from childhood upwards, producing deafness and blindness as frequent side effects. (The situation was likely to have been somewhat similar to that in the UK in the first half of the twentieth century when the overwhelming majority of disabled persons were under 14 years of age. Humphries and Gordon (Humphries S and Gordon P1992 Out of Sight: the experience of disability 1900-1950. Plymouth p12) write:: ‘More than half a million boys and girls had rickets, polio, tuberculosis, cerebral palsy, seriously impaired vision, deafness or a host of other disabilities.) It goes without saying that deafness and blindness, occurring more gradually, were also am inevitable consequence of ageing.’

Garland notes:

‘… the birth of a deformed child was interpreted by the Greeks as a punishment inflicted on its parents by the gods. It therefore follows that the pressure upon such parents to expose their offspring must have been considerable.’

Garland notes:

‘In Sparta, where racial homogeneity was highly prized and where the principles of eugenics were strictly upheld, the abandonment of deformed and sickly infants was actually a legal requirement. The statute which demanded their abandonment was judged to be of such importance that it was incorporated into the code attributed to the legendary Lykourgos. Plutarch (Lyk. 16.1-2) informs us that a newborn child, who in Sparta, unlike in most parts of the Greek world, was not the property of its father but the state, was presented for inspection before the ‘elders of the tribes’ immediately after birth. If the child was strong and lusty, the elders ordered the father to raise it; if, on the other hand, they determined that it was ‘ill-born and ill-formed’, he was required to expose it at a chasm-like place aptly called Apothetai or the Place of Exposure ‘in the belief that the life which nature had not provided with health and strength was of no use either to itself or to the state’.

Garland notes:

‘…there is nothing to indicate that the parents of a congenitally deformed infant were themselves castigated or treated as social outcasts.’

Rome

Garland notes:

‘Dionysios of Halikarnassos writes (2.15.1-2): ‘Romulus ordered all the inhabitants of the city to bring up all their male offspring and the first-born of the girls and not kill any child under three years of age, unless the child was deformed or monstrous (paidon anaperon e teras). He did not prevent the parents from exposing such children on condition that they had first shown them to five neighbours and these had approved.’’

Garland notes:

‘Around the middle of the fifth century B.C. a Roman law was passed which, perhaps as the result of a dramatic increase in the population but possibly as well in part due to an accumulating dread of deformity itself, insisted upon killing of the deformed. Table IV of the lawcode known as the Twelve Tables, which probably dates to this period instructs the paterfamilias or head of the family to ‘Quickly kill … a dreadfully deformed child’ (cf. Cic. Laws 3.8, 19)’

ten Bensel, Rheinberger and Radbill note that:

‘With the onset of Christianity, Greek and Roman ideas about human life began to change. The law or public opinion began discouraging infanticide : in AD 374, Roman Law deemed infant killing to be murder. The fourth-century AD is a significant time in history because Constantine the Great (the first Christian emperor) decreed in 315 and in 322 that the state should provide maintenance and education for poor chiuldren and should prevent the exposure, sale, and murder of infants. Thus, the state’s responsibility for the welfare of children (parens patriae) was officially established. (de Mause 1980)’

Mary McLaughlin notes:

‘On the father’s power of life and death over the newborn child, among barbarian peoples as well as in Roman antiquity, see N Belmont, ‘Levana, ou comment ‘elevér’ les enfants’ Annales, 38 (1973),77-89….’

Lyman notes that the Theodosian Code. dated 322 C.E. states:

‘We have learned that provincials suffering from scarcity of food and lack od sustenance are selling or pledging their children…It is repugnant to our customs to allow any person to be destroyed by hunger or rush forth to the commission of a shameful deed.(Lewis and Reinhold pp483-4 Code no XI. xxvii. 2.)’

Lyman notes that a law from the same time span (315/329 C.E.) states:

‘A law shall be written on bronze or waxed tablets or on linen cloth, and posted throughout all municipalities of Italy, to restrain the hands of parents from infanticide and turn hopes to the better… if any parent should report that he had offspring which on account of poverty he is unable to rear, here shall be no delay in issuing food and clothing, since the rearing of a new-born infant can not tolerate delay. (Lewis and Reinhold p483. Code no XI. xxvii. 1.)

Lyman notes:

‘A long series of edicts against infanticide and the abandonment of children finally had taken up the admonition of Barnabas (ca. 130): ‘Never do away with an unborn child, or destroy it after its birth.’ (The Epistle of Barnabas, 19. In Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers, tr. By M. Staniforth (Baltimore), 1968), p217). That these practices had continued after the conversion of Constantine is testified both by the necessity for continuous additional legislation and also by repeated condemnation of infanticide by church figures and synodal meetings (Tertullian in 200 A.D. has already noted that although laws against exposure and infanticide were on the books , ‘it so happens that no laws are evaded with more impunity or greater safety…’ Quoted in Abt-Garrison, History of Pediatrics (Philadelphia, 1965), p.56.). Lactantius (d. ca. 340) had argued that strangling newborn infants was wrong, ‘for God breathes into their souls for life, not for death… It is as wicked to expose as it is to kill. (Divine Institutes 1. VI c.xx quoted in Abt-Garrison, History of Pediatrics (Philadelphia, 1965), p57). A series of church councils inveighed against the practice and provided aid for abandoned children. (ibid.) ‘

Bakan notes:

‘Roman law gave the father the power of life and death over his children. This law was invoked against children not only in infancy and childhood, but also in later life. Thus, Fulvius, a roman senator, had his son put to death because the son had joined the Catilinarian conspiracy in 63-62bc. The Institutes of Justinian boasted, "The legal power which we have over our children is peculiar to Roman citizens, for no other men have the power over their childrenthat we have. (cited in RW Lee The Elements of Roman Law London: Sweet and Maxwell 1956 p80)

Bakan notes:

‘William Lecky said that infanticide was the "crying vice of the [Roman] empire." (Cited in WG Sumner Folkways Boston: Ginn 1906 p319)’

Bakan on Infanticide:

‘Later on, Constantine abolished the law, but allowed the sale of newborn children into slavery. (RW Lee The Elements of Roman Law London: Sweet and Maxwell 1956 p61)’

Bakan:

‘In Roman law the two acts of will, creating the child and extinguishing the life of the child, became united with the former providing the license for the latter.’. (RW Lee The Elements of Roman Law London: Sweet and Maxwell 1956)’

deMause notes:

‘Children have always taken care of adults in very concrete ways. Ever since Roman times, boys and girls waited on their parents at table, and in the Middle Ages all children except royalty acted as servants, either at home or for others.’

deMause notes:

‘Girls were, of course, valued little, and the instructions of Hilarion to his wife Alis (1BC) are typical of the open way these things were discussed: "If, as may well happen, you give birth to a child, if it is a boy, let it live, if it is a girl, expose it." (referenced to John Garrett Winter Life and Letters in the Papyri (Ann Arbour: Michigan 1933 p56, Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Rheinhold Roman Civilization Sourcebook 2 New York 1955 p403 I MAY HAVE THIS BOOK-YES)’

deMause notes that the result of this female infanticide was a continuous imbalance between the sexes. He gives examples: Milesian Citizenship 228-220 BCE - 118 sons, 28 daughters.

deMause notes that Aristippus (?DATE- PROBABLY ROMAN EMPIRE) is quoted in Bartholomew Batty The Christian Man’s Closet William Lowth Trans. 1581 p28) that a man could do what he wanted with his children for do we not cast away from us our spittle, lice and such like, as things unprofitable, which nevertheless are engendered and bred even out of our own selves."

deMause notes:

‘Seneca Moral Essays John W Basore trans. Cambridge MA 1963 p145:

"Mad dogs we knock on the head; the fierce and savage ox we slay; sickly sheep we put to the knife to keep them from infecting the flock; unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who are at birth weakly and abnormal. Yet it is not anger, but reason that separates the harmful from the sound."’

DATE OF SENECA

deMause notes:

‘The Greeks and Romans were actually an island of enlightenment in a sea of nations still in an earlier stage of sacrificing children to gods, a practice which the Romans tried in vain to stop.’

deMausenotes about Carthaginian child sacrifice:

‘Plutarch Moralia Frank C Babbitt trans. London 1928 p493:

"…with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those that had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people."’

deMause notes:

‘[Child Sacrifice] was practiced by the Irish Celts, the Gauls, the Scandinavians, the Egyptians, the Phoenecians, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and, in certain periods, the Israelites.’ (Many references)

deMause notes:

‘Thousands of bones of sacrificed children have been dug up by archaeologists, often with inscriptions identifying the victims as first-born sons of noble families…’ (Many references)

deMause notes:

‘Sealing children in walls, foundations, of buildings, and bridges to strengthen the structure was also common from buiding the walls of Jericho to as late as 1843 in Germany.’ (Many References)

deMause notes p30: Roman law only considered killing infants as murder from 374CE.

deMause notes p30:

‘ …opposition to infanticide by the Church Fathers often seemed to be based more on their concern for the parent’s soul, than with the child’s life.’

INFORMATION FROM CHANNEL 4 PROGRAMME ON SACRIFICE OF CHILDREN IN CARTHAGE

GATHER INFORMATION AND WRITE

Bodily Functional Difference

Scheerenberger notes:

‘As stated in Deuteronomy 28:28, "The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of the heart."’

Garland notes:

‘By their own imperious reckoning, the Greeks and the Romans stood head an shoulders, culturally speaking, above all other races on earth in part because they alone exemplified the ideal human type. Any departure from that ideal type, however trivial, was therefore interpreted as a mark of the despised barbarian, whose attributed physiological defects were regarded as an expression of the latter’s cultural limitations.’

Greece

Garland notes:

‘It seems likely that Homer is alluding to a pair of Siamese twins in the Iliad when Nestor recalls how he was once beaten by the sons of Aktor, known as the Moliones, in a chariot race, ‘one drove the chariot steadily, steadily he drove, while the other applied the whip’ (23.641f). Since the pair were competing in a solo event, the poet presumably intended his audience to think of them as physically inseparable.’ Further justification for this hypothesis is provided by a scholiast who states that Hesiod described the twins ‘not … like Casto and Pollux, but double-formed, having two bodies and joined to one another.’ (fr. 18 Merkelbach and West) TO APPROPRIATE SECTIONS

Garland notes:

We laugh, in other words, out of a kind of pretence and in order to demonstrate our mastery over the strong emotions aroused by human oddity and incapacitation. Such a function was particularly valuable in societies like those of Greece and Rome, first because deformity, which to the overwhelming majority was inexplicable in natural terms, presented a frightening breach in ‘normal’, everyday reality; and secondly because, owing to the harsh realities of life in the ancient world, most of those who did the laughing could expect to become disabled themselves before too long.

Garland notes:

‘Laughter in antiquity knew no moral boundaries, and from Homer onwards the physical discomfort of others was a constant source of merriment.’

Garland notes of Rome:

‘Ugliness and deformity were a constant target of cheap humour among political or artistic rivals in the genre of archaic poetry known as iambographic.’

Garland notes of Rome:

‘Anecdotal evidence relating to the derision of the disabled abounds. In a society which placed inordinately high premium on intelligence, the mentally deficient were obvious targets.’

Garland notes Philo’s description Karabas, an imbecile:

‘…an inoffensive soul whose madness, ’he tells us, ‘was not fierce and savage but easy-going and quite mild’. It was Karabas’ lot in life to spend day and night ‘naked in the streets, avoiding neither heat nor cold, the toy of children and idle youths.’ (Against Flaccus 35-8)’

Garland notes:

‘Not even war heroes were spared the indignity of being mocked for their disabilities. A certain Spurius Carvilius, who was crippled in battle and became too embarrassed to go about in public, was urged by his mother to overcome his scruples ‘by thinking of his gallantry with every step he took’ (Cicero De Oratore 2.249). …[it] is revealing … that even in a militaristic state like Rome the disabled veteran was not universally esteemed.’

Garland notes:

‘It does not seem to have occurred to any Greek or Roman to question the assumption that ugly and deformed persons constitute an appropriate target for ridicule, though the tendency to render them ridiculous was more prevalent among the Romans. In their eyes the deformed were fulfilling their pre-ordained social role by generating laughter and providing diversion. Indeed … it was one of the things which this otherwise useless group could do to justify its existence.’

Garland notes that Francis Bacon in DATE noted:

‘Deformed persons are commonly even with Nature: For as nature hath done ill by them; So doe they by Nature: Being for the most part, (as the Scripture saith) void of Natutal Affection; And so they have their Revenge of Nature. Certainly there is a Consent between the Body and the Minde; and where Nature erreth in the One, she ventureth in the Other. (Francis Bacon, ‘On Deformitie’ in The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall (ed. M Kiernan [Cambridge, Mass. 1985] 134)’

Garland notes:

‘Disability and deformity are not merely physiological conditions which invite a rationally determined set of responses and reactions from society. They also possess a symbolic function which contains a wide range of significations that are capable of varied interpretation. Gibbosity, for instance, characteristically signifies malignity, whereas giganticism is associated with mental retardation. Other deformities have a more ambivalent and complex significance. The insight attributed to the blind may be divinely or diabolically inspired, while dwarfism is associated with playfulness, quickwittedness and cunning.

‘The power of such language is such that, even when we know the signification to be inappropriate and unjustified, we none the less escape its influence only with extreme difficulty. The belief that ugliness and deformity are consonant with degeneracy and moral corruption, for instance, is widely accepted in modern popular culture, which operates on the assumption that virtue is incompatible with a repugnant or even a merely unprepossessing exterior.’

Garland notes:

‘The language of symbolic signification is most pernicious when it combines with the hypothesis, by no means wholly discredited even in contemporary scientific circles, that vice and depravity leave visible traces upon the human body, rather in the same way that Plato claimed they leave indelible marks upon the soul. This leads to the conclusion that the close examination od an individual’s facial features and morphology can reveal the disposition of the mind.’

Garland notes:

‘The Greeks certainly believed in the interdependency of good looks, good breeding and good behaviour as is demonstrated by the expression ‘kalos kagothos’ , which literally means ‘one who is both good and beautiful.’

Garland notes Shakespeare’s quote:

‘When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.’ (William Shakespeare, The Tempest Act 2 Scene 2)

Garland notes:

‘Physicians … had little to offer by way of alleviating the discomfort of the chronically sic or increasing their chances of survival. The popularly held belief that congenital deformity was a punishment inflicted by the gods is also likely to have militated against their efforts to correct severe cases of this kind.’

Garland notes that the Greeks:

‘…may also have shrewdly calculated that if the gods in their wisdom had sought fit to render an individual deformed from birth, then physicians had no business attempting to interfere with their deliberately botched handiwork’

Garland notes:

‘It is extremely unlikely, for instance, that a physician would have been called in to save the life of a newborn child who was ailing. As Hanson (Hanson AE, 1987 The eight-months’ child and the etiquette of birth: obsit omen!, pp589-602 in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 61), notes, the widespread belief in the non-viability of a child born in the eighth month would have served a valuable psychological function, both by relieving the parents of such a child of guilt feelings and by exonerating the midwife and birthing attendants from the charge of negligence.’

Garland notes:

‘The celebrated series of inscribed columns dating to the second half of the fourth century BC which have been found in the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros suggests at first sight that persons suffering from pathological deformities and disabilities constituted a sizeable proportion of those who came to the healing god seeking a cure. Of the seventy-odd cases which are listed on the surviving tablets, eleven relate to blindness, two to deafness, one to muteness, and nine to paralysis. None deals with restricted growth or other morphological disorders.

‘Intriguing though this evidence is, it should not be regarded as representative of the types of cures routinely performed in the Asklepieion. No doubt the cases which have been selected for promulgation are precisely those which most spectacularly testify to the healing power of the god. Like modern healers, Asklepios and his human entourage were not averse to self-promotion, and self-evidently a seemingly miraculous cure was more deserving of commemoration than a routine one. We should not ignore the possibility, however as Edelstein (Edelstein L 1967 Ancient Medicine. Selected Papers of L. Edelstein, ed. Temkin, O and C. Baltimore p245) has suggested, that many sick people, including the chronically disabled, did indeed visit Epidauros and other healing sanctuaries as a last resort after they had exhausted all other medical options. Even so, we should be wary of assuming that healing sanctuaries specialised in cases of this kind.’

Garland notes:

‘Mental sickness appears to have been as much of a problem in antiquity as it is today, although the incidence of its occurrence is quite impossible to gauge. Though we hear little about he treatment of persons who suffered from chronic mental disturbance until the first century AD, herbal and homeopathic remedies were regularly applied from earliest times.’

Garland notes that Theognis (11. 535-8) notes:

‘A slave’s head is never straight. It is always crooked and is set on a slanting neck. For just as a rose and a hyacinth never grow upon a squill, so a free child is never born of a slave woman.’

Garland notes that Aristotle notes in the Politics 1.1254b 27-31):

‘It is nature’s intention to differentiate physically between the bodies of freemen and those of slaves by rendering the latter capable of performing menial tasks, and the former upright and unsuited for such work but adapted to civil life.’

Garland notes:

‘In the eyes of physicians and scientists the female body was not only anatomically inferior to the male body but also pathologically dependent upon it. Hippocratic writers maintained that only intercourse with a man could bring health and sanity to the deficient and imperfect female organism, since the latter’s health and sanity were deemed to be dependent upon fertility and maternity. The ‘cure’ for femaleness, therefore, was regular intercourse and pregnancy, the virtues of which these writers never tired of extolling.’

Garland notes:

‘Palaeopathology, the branch of medical science which utilises human remains in order to study the prevalence of disease in antiquity, reveals little about congenital deformity in the Graeco-Roman world except for the fact that it occurred. Rare examples from the Greek mainland that have been identified in osteological data include two instances of clubfoot from the necropolis at Lerna in the Peloponnese, one example of congenital spinal malformation from Corinth, another of congenital hip dislocation from Argos, and a single case of spina bifida from Tiryns.’

Garland notes:

‘Modern estimates put the present incidence of congenital abnormalities requiring medical attention at approximately 3 per cent of all new born infants. … In light of the high level of malnutrition and disease in antiquity, both major causes of birth defects, it is safe to assume that congenital deformity was at least as equally widespread. Social practice would have increased the prevalence of certain congenital defects. Achondroplasia, for instance, a type of dwarfism caused by inter-breeding which is characterised by arrested development of the long bones, though it is barely attested in the archaeological record, would have been particularly prevalent in rural areas because of the tendency towards endogamy among members of remote villages.’

Garland notes:

‘Although the incidence of congenital disability was probably higher in antiquity than it is in modern society, a far smaller percentage of persons so afflicted would have survived infancy. This is partly because the Greeks and the Romans would have had little compunction in withholding the necessities of life from any infant whom they deemed incapable of growing up to lead a full, active and independent existence. Nor would they have seen any virtue in promoting or prolonging a life which offered nothing but discomfort and pain for the owner., and financial hardship for his relatives. There is every reason, therefore, to assume that the overwhelming majority of infants exhibiting gross abnormalities, and many, too, afflicted with minor aberrations, were exposed immediately, while others spontaneously succumbed to their ailment shortly aftre birth for lack of basic medical treatment. Almost all infants afflicted with cleft palate, for instance, a relatively uncomplicated bone defect caused by the failure of the two halves of the palate to unite during foetal development, would have died in the first week because of the inability to suck at the breast. (Manchester K, The Archaeology of Disease. Bradford 1983)’

Garland notes:

‘…Aristotle states that when onset of blindness is due to factors beyond a person’s control the condition evokes pity, whereas when it is brought on by drinking it is regarded as shameful. (EN 3.1114a 25-8)’

Garland notes that in Plato’s Protagoras Socrates states (323d):

‘When people believe that others are experiencing misfortune by Nature or by luck, nobody gets angry or advises them or lectures them or punishes them in the hope of changing them. Instead they feel pity towards them. For who is so stupid as to try to do any of these things to the ugly, say, or the puny or the enfeebled? Everybody, I imagine, understands that it is by Nature or by luck that people acquire these characteristics, namely personal advantages and their opposite.’

Garland notes:

‘…it seems that the Greeks were far less hostile towards and fearful of, major terata than the Romans.’

Haj notes:

‘…there are records indicating that leprosy was introduced into Europe about 350 B.C. through Greece, probably brought by the armies of Darius. Herodotus mentions a certain skin disease of the Persians, sufferers from which were obliged to live outside towns (Encyclopedia Biblica III sec. 2766). In 62 B.C. the returning victorious armies of Pompey brought it with them to Rome. (ibid. 2767) In A.D. 150 Galen mentions its presence in Germany and by the ninth century, or before the Crusades, it was spread all over Europe.’

Existence

Winzer: Herodotus includes a portrayal of a deaf prince.

Some physical difference would have come from battle injuries:

Garland notes:

‘According to a recent calculation, 10 per cent of all known Greek skeletons exhibit at least one fracture. (M Grmek Diseases in the Ancient World 1983 p59). Four out of five of these occur on males. Warfare and to a lesser degree all the physical occupations which men undertook outside the home were responsible for this imbalance. Though women’s life expectancy was much lower than men’s, men were far more likely to suffer injury.’

Garland notes:

‘One of the chief causes of postnatally acquired disability was malnutrition, which in the modern world is responsible for one in five disabilities world wide. The earliest allusion to starvation oedema, a common consequence of famine, is to be found in Hesiod, who urges the farmer to lay up plenty in store for the winter ‘so that the irresistible cold of winter does not take you in poverty, causing you to rub a swollen foot with a shrunken hand.’ (Works and days 496f). Children were particularly likely to be deprived of adequate nourishment when food was in short supply, and the effects of malnutrition would have affected them physically for the rest of their lives. Soranos alludes to a rachitic deformity in children which caused them to become ‘ twisted in the region of the thighs (2.20)…. Vitamin D deficiency, which impedes bone growth and composition, and leads to rickets in children, and osteomalacia in adults, is likely to have been especially rife among girls, who as Xenophon informs us,were fed less than boys in the Greek world, except in Sparta (Lak. Pol. 1.3) (The practice of giving girls less food than boys is implicitly defended on biological grounds by Aristotle, who claims that females actually require less food than males (HA 9.608b 15). In the Roman Empire, too, the child-support which was provided to poor parents from the time of Emperor Trajan onwards was substantially less in the case of girls. Osteological evidence in the form of dental defects further indicates that girls were subject to malnutrition in early childhood and adolescence. ,

Garland notes:

‘Since only the well-to-do had the means to consult a physician, even a minor trauma, such as a broken arm or leg, fractured kneecap, or dislocated shoulder, was likely to result in permanent disability.’

Garland notes:

‘At the end of the fifth century BC the expression ‘young men with cauliflower ears’ came to be used of Athenian aristocrats with oligarchic sympathies who aped Spartan manners’ (Query for image)

Garland notes:

‘At moments of crisis the ugly and deformed, like other marginal groups, including foreigners and ethnic minorities, tend to become liable to physical persecution which often results in their death. In Greek society the psychological need to personalise the dread evoked by some crisis was institutionalised by the practice of selecting a victim known as a pharmakos or ‘scapegoat’, upon whom the blame for the current evils that beset the community was then laid. The victim, who was often but not invariably ugly and deformed, underwent ritual expulsion or, much less commonly it seems, execution. The reason for selecting the ugly and deformed is partly that these were deemed to feel resentment towards Nature or the gods for singling them out as freaks, as well as towards society for subsequently denying their full human status.’

Garland notes:

‘Since we are talking about a world in which the average lifespan for men and women respectively was probably never more than 44 and 37 years respectively, probably all but the most robust would have begun to exhibit the symptoms of advancing age from the beginning of the fourth decade onwards.’

Garland notes

‘The majority of the disabled, even when the were lucky enough to be essentially self-reliant, must have led lives of extreme isolation, hardship and privation. That was due to the restrictions which in many cases their disabilities imposed upon their freedom of movement, the limited opportunities which they had for gainful employment, and the disdain in which they were generally held both by their families and by society at large. It follows that we are investigating the condition of a class of people who for the most part were not merely marginalised, but outcast in the fullest sense of the word.’

Garland notes

‘Acknowledgement of the physical and economic hardships facing the elderly and infirm is indicated by the fact that in many Greek communities parents enjoyed the protection of a law which required their offspring to provide food and shelter as long as they lived. In the Roman world, by contrast, no such law existed before the second century AD.’

Garland notes

‘In households at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, particularly those whose incomes were barely sufficient to feed their hard-working and productive members, the disabled would probably have been the victims of silent recriminations at the very least.’

Garland notes

‘…we know next to nothing about the fate of infirm and disabled slaves. Suetonius states that the Emperor Claudius issued an edict declaring that they were to be abandoned rather than killed, which suggests that many roman slaves were put to death, rather like old horses which had outlived their usefulness (Claud. 25).

Garland notes

‘Though freeborn Greeks and Romans regarded waged labour with revulsion and contempt, no such delicate scruples can have conditioned the lives of the deformed and disabled. The world of entertainment probably provided the most lucrative form of employment for a talented minority. The popularity of statuettes and vase paintings depicting deformed dwarfs, hunchbacks and obese women strongly suggests that people of this sort were in high demand as singers, dancers, musicians, jugglers and clowns.’

Garland notes

‘Not all deformities and disabilities lend themselves to ribald mockery, however. The few options for the blind included becoming a bard, seer,, poet or musician. Blindness, at least in the popular imagination, was an essential attribute of the poet, just as in the modern world blues singers and piano tuners tend to be blind (The list of blind blues singers includes Blind Blake, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the Rev. Gary Davis….)’

Garland notes

‘The lame, who probably constituted the largest number of disabled persons in the ancient world, probably fared better than the blind in economic terms since there were many more skilled and semi-skilled occupations of sedentary nature that were available to them.’

Garland notes

‘Though imbecilic slaves, known indiscriminately in the Roman world as moriones, stulti, fatui, and scurrae, were popular in the late Republican and Imperial periods, we cannot assume that half-witted and idiotic citizens would have been tolerated quite so good-humouredly. The majority were probably left to fend for themselves and earned a pittance by begging. The village idiot may have been a familiar phenomenon in the ancient world but to my knowledge he is never mentioned in our sources.

Garland notes

‘The only ancient community known to have made financial provision for its poor and disabled citizens was Athens.’

Garland notes of Latin literature’s recording of disabled servants:

‘Though this is probably an exaggeration, it would almost seem as if no fashionable household was complete without a generous sprinkling of dwarfs, mutes, cretins, eunuchs and hunchbacks, whose principle duty appears to have been to undergo degrading and painful humiliation in order to provide amusement at dinner parties and on other festive occasions.

Garland notes

‘Quintilian tells us that some Romans were prepared to pay more for deformed slaves than for physically perfect ones, and the evidence bears him out (Inst. 2.5.11).’

Garland notes

‘Plutarch states that in Rome the demand for freaks was so great that… there existed a ‘monster market’ or teraton agora. Its merchandise included ‘persons who have no calves, or are weasel-armed, or who have three eyes, or are ostrich-headed’ (Mor. 520c).’

Garland notes

‘There is little reason to doubt that deformed slaves were as much the target for their owners’ sexual proclivities as their more handsome counterparts, nor that in some households they were primarily selected because of the erotic appeal of their deformity. Slave status … imposed one degrading condition in primis: namely ‘a slave’s obligation to answer to an owner with his or her body for any and all offences, including his unrestricted availability in sexual relations.’

Garland notes

‘Lacking the elaborate mechanisms of, say, the Christian Church for enforcing their will, both Greek and roman polytheism were more modestly equipped to elicit submission and subservience from either the devout or the recalcitrant One obvious strategy was to point the accusatory finger at the deformed as anomalous creatures who signify the anger of the gods. It was a strategy which had the incidental benefit of providing a justification for treating such persons as outcasts.’

Garland notes

‘Since the Greeks believed that the birth of a healthy and viable infant was dependent upon the goodwill of the gods, it followed that the birth of one who was congenitally deformed was seen as an expression of their ill-will and anger. The belief is already voiced in Hesiod, who in the Works and Days warns his audience that only righteous parents produce ‘children who resemble their parents’ (1. 235), assuming that ‘resemblance to one’s parents’ is here intended as a euphemism for ‘whole-bodied’, as is the case in later times. Foremost among the impieties which the gods statutorily punished by the birth of a deformed child was the breaking of an oath to which they had previously been summoned as witnesses.

Compelling evidence for the widespread acceptance of this belief is provided by the celebrated oath which the Athenians allegedly took before the battle of Plataiai in 479 BC and subsequently administered to their ephebes in the following century. It contained the following dread proviso (Tod, GHI II 204.39-45):

‘If I remain faithful to the inscribed oath, may women give birth to monsters (terata).’’

FOR MEDIEVAL:

Garland notes in a footnote to deformity in Greece:

‘The Greeks, of course, were by no means alone in viewing congenital deformity as a punishment for the iniquity of one’s parents or forbears. In the Middle ages freaks were popularly attributed to the union of mortal women, especially witches, with incubi or other kinds of demons.’

Garland notes

‘Though a deformed child was therefore an innocent victim of its parents’ sinfulness, it inevitably served as an unpleasant reminder of human wickedness. As such, it probably tended to be burdened with a certain odium, even if this odium was occasionally tempered by a humane pity for its innocence.’

Garland notes

‘We do not know to what extent the deformed and disabled were denied access to Greek and Roman sanctuaries, as madmen were to churches in the Middle Ages, but it would hardly be surprising if the more distressing cases were excluded from participation in the processions and festivals which were such a prominent feature in the civic life of ancient communities in order not to offend the gods. The Romans even went so far as to attribute their name for epilepsy, morbus comitialis to the fact that an epileptic attack interrupted the day of the comitia or public assembly. Presumably a atak of this sort, if it occurred inside a sanctuary, would also have interrupted any religious observance.’

Garland notes

’The extent to which the Romans interpreted birth omens as signs from the gods is demonstrated by the fact that ‘monstrum’ is etymologically related to ‘monere’ (to warn).’

Garland notes that Roman records (Obsequens 25)

‘…conjoined twins were usually cremated by the haruspices (Etruscan diviners] on the mainland before being cast into the sea.’

Garland notes

‘Even as late as AD 112 Roman priests carried out the ritual killing of a dicephalic child whom they place in a box and then threw into the River Tiber (Phleon in FGrH 257 F36.35).’

Infanticide

Winzer quotes Aristotle in The Politics :

‘As to the raising and exposure of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.’

Winzer quotes Hippocrates

‘Which children should be raised?’

Winzer mentions Sparta and the presentation of newborns for decision on fitness for citizenship under the laws of Lycurgus. The idiotic, blind and otherwise disabled were exposed to the elements in a gorge in the Taygetus Mountains, thrown into the River Eurotes, or abandoned in the wilderness.

Winzer quotes Solon’s Laws in Athens which allowed the outright killing of weak children or placing them in clay vessels and leaving them to die by the wayside.

Thebes outlawed infanticide altogether.

Winzer notes that

‘Ancient medicine seems to have made very little of the life of the new-born, and many early societies practiced infanticide. The Greeks and Romans shared the notion that a vital state arises from the innate strength of its citizens, and they enacted laws designed to weed out those who could not contribute.’

Barnes in his Chapter A Legacy of Oppression: A History of Disability in Western Culture gives a materialist account of the origins of disability and starts with Greece:

‘It is often overlooked, however, that the Greek economy was built on slavery and it was an overtly patriarchal, hierarchical, and violent society. …(they) were a violent race, ever prone to war- military service for Greek males was obligatory. …In this type of society the pursuit of physical and intellectual fitness was essential; there was little room for people with any form of flaw or imperfection. The Greek obsession with bodily perfection, which can be traced back to 700-675 BC (Dutton 1996), found expression in prescribed infanticide for children with perceived imperfections…’

Oliver and Barnes reference: Garland R (1995) The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World, Duckworth, London TO BIBLIO-DONE, TO ORDER LIST- DONE

Rome

Existence

Winzer: Suetonius- 120CE - references to disabled people in Imperial Rome.

Garland notes:

‘In the Roman world … men faced a considerably higher risk of injury than women.’

Attitudes to Bodily Imperfection

Bodily imperfection may have been seen as preferable to insanity or idiocy. Sinason notes: (DATE OF CICERO fl.81-42bce)

‘As Cicero commented in his ‘Discussions at Tusculum’ (trans. M Grant 1982, p112),

"When Democritus lost his sight, it is true that he could no longer distinguish black from white, yet he could distinguish good from bad, just from unjust, right from wrong … whereas if it had been the comprehension of ideas that he lacked, a happy life would have been out of the question."’

Winzer quotes Suetonius remarking that the Emperor Augustus:

‘loathed people who were dwarfish or in any way deformed, regarding them as freaks of nature and bringers of bad luck.’

Infanticide as an Answer to Imperfection

There is no doubt that ancient societies regarded infanticide as unremarkable when applied to the imperfect or unwanted child.

Barnes quotes Garland’s 1995 paper The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World which refers to Soranus’ (early second century CE) WHO WAS HE? writings, one of which covers ‘How to recognise a child that is worth raising’ The child:

‘…should be perfect in all its parts, limbs and senses, and have passages that are not obstructed, including the ears, nose, throat, urethra and anus. Its natural movements be neither slow nor feeble, its limbs bend and stretch, its size and shape should be appropriate, and it should respond to natural stimuli.’

Hutchinson Chronicle of World History notes 116ce Soranus, a physician of Ephesus practising at Alexandria, publishes his work on gynaecology. He suggests methods of contraception and recommends abortion where delivery would endanger the mother’s life.

Winzer quotes Soranus (early 2nd century CE): as defining the art of child rearing being that of recognising ‘the newborns that are worth bringing up’

Winzer notes that Cicero intimated that Rome readily adopted the Greek attitude toward handicapped infants.

Winzer quotes de Mause 1974 stating that the father had the right to reject a child at birth, to kill, mutilate exile or sell his children.

Winzer states (from de Mause)

‘Any child under three who might someday become a burden on society was thrown into the Tiber by the father. Infants were also left to die in the sewers that ran through the streets of ancient Rome.’

Winzer notes contrary evidence of reluctance to engage in infanticide- Bell and Harper (1977) of children who could have been exposed but were not. She notes that Greece and Rome started putting restrictions on infanticide- some requiring five neighbour’s consent, and outlawing killing of first born sons entirely.

Winzer: By 4th century CE

‘Emperor Constantine offered financial assistance to families who might otherwise have abandoned or killed their new-born children.

Winzer notes generally for all the above

‘Disabled children who survived these draconian measures- and there appear to have been many, possibly the result of parental solicitude, undetected congenital conditions, or post-natal handicaps- were tolerated if they were of economic or social value.’

Winzer notes that by the time of the Empire c.30 BCE unwanted infants could now be placed at the base of the Columna Lactaria, and the state provided wet-nurses to feed and save them.

Winzer notes that in the 2nd Century CE the paterfamilias was deprived of his right to expose children, and by the 3rd century CE child exposure was the equivalent of murder, although it was not until the 4th century CE that male parents lost all power of death over members of the family.

Invalicide as an Answer to Imperfection

Note on rights of paterfamilias

Imperfection as Treatable

There is evidence that imperfections were seen as treaable in the ancient world. One of the metods emloyed was the closeting of people within temples- incubation. This originated in Greece (or possibly even in ancient Egypt) and was introduced to Rome. It was still evident in medieval times.

Mora in his Chapter Italy on the History of Psychiatry in Italy notes:

‘It is interesting, that, according to legend, on the occasion of a severe epidemic of plague in the year 293 BC, a delegation of Roman citizens was sent to Greece, to the Temple of Asclepios, the god of medicine, to ask for leniency. While there a snake, the traditional symbol of Asclepios, entered the boat and, on the return journey, it disembarked at the Tiberine Island, near Rome. A temple was erected there and incubation techniques, allegedly resulting also in the cure of mental patients, flourished for a considerable time.’ (Quoting Martire E 1934, in Italian)

Also move to Greek section RESEARCH ASCLEPIOS MORE.

Low Value Roles for the Imperfect

Winzer notes:

‘In Rome many blind boys were trained to become beggars or were sold as rowers; blind girls became prostitutes.’

Winzer notes:

‘Mentally retarded people were sold as slaves, taken for beggars, or sometimes deliberately maimed to add to their value as objects of charity. Some disabled people served Rome as amusements or diversions; a wealthy family occasionally kept a mentally retarded person as a fool for amusement of the household and its guests.’

Winzer notes that in Rome by the 2nd century BCE :

‘A special market was established where a buyer might purchase legless, armless, or three-eyed men, giants, dwarfs or hermaphrodites.

CATHERINE NOTES WHAT DID THEY DO WITH THEM- ANY LINK TO ENTERTAINMENT, JESTER ROLE ETC.

Carthage

Winzer notes that blind children in Carthage were burned on a slow fire as a sacrifice to the sun. (Carthage thrived c. 800-146 b.c.e)

Palestine

Scheerenberger notes

‘Palestine, which served as the crossroads of the Near East, provided the world with some of its greatest moral codes. The Ten Commandments and the 613 precepts contained in the Torah or Pentateuch, which was collated around 450 BC, covered nearly every aspect of individual and collective human circumstance.’

TO INTRODUCTION OF CLASSICAL AND TO FORENSICS

Scheerenberger notes

Haj notes:

‘Among the ancient Hebrews deafness was known too as evidenced by the many references to their rights (Exodus 4:11, Leviticus 19:14, Mishna I 4:96).’

Haj notes:

‘According to biblical law marriage of deaf-mutes was not valid, but the Rabbis sanctioned such marriage when contracted by signs (Ruth Bender, The Conquest of Deafness, Cleveland: Western Reserve University, 1960 p.20).’

Attitude to Imperfection

Biblical portrayal of blind, lame, sick as unsuitable for sacrifice- implying that impairment is offensive to God and that only whole humans are acceptable

Malachi 1:7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD [is] contemptible.

Malachi 1:8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, [is it] not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, [is it] not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts.

DATE OF MALACHI

Biblical infliction by God of Dumbness as a punishment

Ezekiel 3:24 Then the spirit entered into me, and set me upon my feet, and spake with me, and said unto me, Go, shut thyself within thine house.

Ezekiel 3:25 But thou, O son of man, behold, they shall put bands upon thee, and shall bind thee with them, and thou shalt not go out among them:

Ezekiel 3:26 And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover: for they [are] a rebellious house.

Ezekiel 3:27 But when I speak with thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; He that heareth, let him hear; and he that forbeareth, let him forbear: for they [are] a rebellious house.

DATE OF EZEKIEL

Barnes 1997: Deuteronomy (DATE – traditionally said to have been written by Moses DATE but modern critics assign mostly to the late 7th Century b.c.e.) states that if men are immoral, then they will be blinded by God.

Winzer notes: Hebraic Law contains some of the first known provisions for the disabled, founded on the biblical question, ‘Or who maketh the dumb or deaf, or the seeing or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?’ (Exodus 4:10ff). This promotes the idea that impairment is ‘just deserts’. (Date of Exodus: traditionally said to be authored by Moses but modern critics place it as being written between the 9th and 5th Centuries b.c.e.. The events are thought to have happened between the extreme limits of 1580 b.c.e. and 1215 b.c.e.)

Also 2 Samuel 5:6-8

‘6- And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land: which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame , thou shalt not come in hither: thinking, David cannot come in hither.

7- Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.

8- And David said on that day, Whosoever geteth up to the gutter and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are the hated of David’s soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.’

(Date after 970 b.c.e –describes the reigns of Saul c. 1025-1010 b.c.e. and David c. 1010- 970 b.c.e.)

Barnes notes that the Jewish faith proscribed infanticide.

Christianity

Haj notes:

‘The Christian Church…permitted marriage among the deaf by a ceremony conducted in the language of signs ( Hollowell Davis, Hearing and Deafness New York: Holt Rinehart and Co. 1960 p406)’

Haj notes:

‘We know that there were may deaf people at the time of Christ from the several references to them in the Gospel as having been cured by Jesus. (Matthew 11:2-6, Mark 7:37)’

Luke on evil and impairment

Luke 11:14 And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.

Luke 11:15 But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.

Matthew was probably written about 80 BCE but based on an earlier source ‘Q’, probably written in the decades following the death of Jesus. It reflects the feelings of early Christians, and more than the other Gospels it shows a good appreciation of the conflicts between Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah and those that did not and may have been intended to convince those Jews who were open to persuasion. Consequently it is based solidly in Old Testament references and may more closely replicate traditional Jewish themes than the other Gospels.

Matthew 12: 22-28 shows an association between disability and evil:

Matthew 12:22 Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.

Matthew 12:23 And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?

Matthew 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard [it], they said, This [fellow] doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.

Matthew 12:25 And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:

Matthew 12:26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?

Matthew 12:27 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast [them] out? therefore they shall be your judges.

Matthew 12:28 But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.

Matthew 9: 2-6 links disability with sin

Matthew 9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.

Matthew 9:3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This [man] blasphemeth.

Matthew 9:4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?

Matthew 9:5 For whether is easier, to say, [Thy] sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?

Matthew 9:6 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

Matthew 9:32-34 links dumbness with devils

Matthew 9:32 As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil.

Matthew 9:33 And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake: and the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel.

Matthew 9:34 But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils.

Matthew on proper treatment of the devalued. (For Inclusion)

Matthew 9:10 And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

Matthew 9:11 And when the Pharisees saw [it], they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

Matthew 9:12 But when Jesus heard [that], he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

Matthew 9:13 But go ye and learn what [that] meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Mental Difference- Mental Disorder

Ducey and Simon note:

‘The study of clinical psychiatry in antiquity is problematical, since the field scarcely existed as a defined area of inquiry or as a category of knowledge. Textbooks, specialists in the field, and even a technical term for psychiatry were lacking. The infrequent, brief, and anecdotal medical accounts that do exist could not be termed case histories, i.e., documents detailing both present illness and significant or extended portions of the patient’s previous life. Undoubtedly, much accumulated knowledge was transmitted via oral traditions of medical practice, and extensive written case records of medical practice were probably not kept.’

Scheerenberger notes

‘As stated in Deuteronomy 28:28, "The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of the heart."’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘When Aristotle, further developing the views of Socrates and Plato, who believed that the good life could be obtained through self-knowledge and rational thought, succeeded in designing the first rational psychology, he still believed with Plato that the intellect (nous) had a superhuman, divine origin. When Hippocrates, the great empirical observer, declared that the sacred disease – epilepsy – was no more sacred than any other affliction and was not the result of the machinations of supernatural spirits, he still believed that melancholia was caused by black bile and could be cured with purgatives. Cicero, several centuries later, objected to the black-bile hypothesis and maintained that melancholia was the result of psychological difficulties. He proclaimed that people were responsible for their emotional difficulties in a psychological sense, and that they brought their ills upon themselves and could do something about them. Thus, he laid down the foundations of psychotherapy (for him ‘philosophy’), but his ideas did not come into their own until the modern era.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

Alexander and Selesnick note:

Clarke notes:

‘There were several kinds of popular healing cult in Romano-British times, however. Probably the most important was that related to springs and wells, where exotic and local interests sometimes met. Bath (Sulis/Minerva medica), Lydney, Gloucestershire (Nodens or Nodons) and Buxton (Aquae Arnemetiae- a ‘sacred grove’ reference) are famous enough in the long subsequent history of such places, but they were not primarily for the humbler majority at the time.’

Clarke notes:

‘Chinese medicine has not been shown to have contributed substantially if at all to the early European tradition, but it is an instance of a more sophisticated and rational or rationalizing system…. The basic scheme (c. 6th century B.C.) was… expressed in quasi-meteorological language… [and later]…was contained in a more thorough logical apparatus… in the Nei Ching tesxtbook of the first century B.C.. The approach was Taoist, by living harmoniously with the world around… . The Nei Ching included a psychological theory of five emotions;…. There was, however, no clear theory of psychopathology.’

TO LATER SECTION

Clarke notes of the medical psychology of the Nei Ching that:

‘The relevant ideographs (Veith I (trans.) Huang Ti Nei Ching 2nd edition Cambridge 1966) linked verbally the paralytic, the inane and the leper. These are all conditions which put the patient outside normal social intercourse, on a non-medical principle.’

Clarke notes:

‘[Hippocrates]… moved epilepsy from the category of a ‘sacred’ – and so inexplicable and arbitrary – disease to that of an ailment on a human scale: in the Middle Ages it had some difficulty in keeping this status .’

Clarke notes:

‘The early chthonic cults included several features of modern tribal systems. The seer Melampos, credited with starting the orgiastic Dionysiac cult, had command of a special (bird) language and was considered a physician and able to deal with violent madness.

Clarke notes:

‘"Asclepios" was in being bytheseventh century, and the cult reached Athens in Hippocrates’ lifetime (late fifth century). Another subsidiary shrine (Pergamum) was still very active in the second century A.D., but with a more exclusive class of visitor in later years.’

‘Clarke notes:

‘Roman medicine was for very long wholly a folk medicine, and it came be run, typically, on the basis of the slave-doctor on a paternalistic estate. The Etruscans, of oriental outlook, may have contributed to some divinatory procedures of relevance, but Hellenistic influence was great well before the end of the Republic; and as far as a theoretical framework in psychiatric matters is concerned, Rome was primarily a transmitter of Greek ideas, with the help of a good many Greek physicians. There are indeed early references to mental illness in Rome….’

Clarke notes:

‘There was no lack of psychiatric incident at Rome and in the Empire, and there were many medical texts, professional and literary, Greek and Latin. Aretaeus, for one, had enlightened ideas on the humane handling of mental patients; and Rufus of Ephesus wrote a treatise on ‘the interrogation of the patient’ which took account of the relevance of answers, slips of memory, demeanour, hesitation in speech and inappropriate affect. … But explanations of mental disorder, so far as they were rational, remained firmly humoral.’

Clarke notes:

‘A Roman contribution to more purely psychological theories of psychopathology occurs in the third book of Cicero’s Tusculan Discussions. The first books, on death and pain, can be seen as an attempt to clear unanswerable metaphysical questions out of the way. The third deals with psychological distress, and one section analyses terminology. ‘Terrors’, ‘lusts’, ‘fits of anger’, are distinguished by Cicero as mere ‘disturbances’ (pertubationes), from disease (morbus); but more continuous unsoundness (insania) does imply illness (aegritudo). Amentia and dementia were more specifically ‘aberration’, not the same as their modern usage. The Greek usage of m a n ¢ i a [mania] was noted as less analytic than the Latin. The Latin for real (sc. Psychotic) derangement was furor, and this was equated with m e l a n c o l i a [melancholia]; but Cicero explicitly rejected the literal ‘black bile’ explanation of the behaviour. … Incidentally, the use of insania in this context precedes its use by Celsus, to whom Garrison gave priority.’

Clarke notes:

‘The Indian system of about the fourth century, A.D., was based on three ‘humours’, gall, mucous and wind…. Empirical physiological and anatomical knowledge was slight against the Graeco-Roman…[b]ut the schema … had psychiatric possibilities. Susruta [had] one division, about diseases that affect the whole body [and] dealt with some forms of insanity and included epilepsy; and this approach can be related to the principle that "all diseases have their seat in the body and the mind." … But on turning the other section which covers mental derangement, it is found to be called the division of demoniacal possession.’

Madness as Supernatural/Divine Intervention

Rosen in his book Madness in Society: Chapters in the Historical Sociology of Mental Illness :

‘Reflections of medical attitudes and views occur in the popular conception of mental disorder, but they are found side by side with older, more deep-seated and traditional views. As indicated by Herodotus in the fifth century BC and by others in later periods, the popular view throughout Graeco-Roman antiquity was derived from a heterogeneous mass of belief and opinion, in which primitive elements were modified and overlaid by higher elements as Greek and Roman culture developed. A basic element of the popular view, however, was the belief that mental abnormality was due to the action of some supernatural power or being which entered the body or produced its effect by action from without.’

Rosen:

‘These ancient, primitive ideas, more or less modified in the course of time, are found throughout Greek and Latin literature. Thus, Hesiod (fl. Eighth century BC) tells how before the opening of Pandora’s box men lived on earth free of the troubles, the grinding toil and catching sicknesses which the Keres now bring upon them (Hesiod Works and Days 90-92). A later poet, Semonides of Amorgas (ca. 660BC), reflecting with sardonic pessimism on the vanity of human hopes and desires, ascribes life’s uncertainty to the multitudinous Keres that hover about men ready to undo them through war, shipwreck, disease, suicide and death.’

Rosen:

‘Where madness is considered for the most part as possession by a divine power or being, it is not surprising to find the mentally disordered linked with the supernatural world and viewed with the awe inspired by the mysterious and inexplicable. Because of its link with the supernatural, mental derangement set the sufferer apart from his fellows. The mentally afflicted individual might be considered in a sense above ordinary men, even sacred, for under appropriate circumstances he might display extraordinary powers, including the gift of prophecy, denied to the general run of men.’

Madness as Physical Disfunction

There was acceptance that physical- chemical- agents could affect mental states.

WL Jones refers to Richard Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy:

‘the saffron crocus (C. Sativus) used by Mongols, Greeks, Romans and Arabs to promote merriment.’

ALSO TO DARK AGES FOR ARABS

NOTE ON ALCOHOL AND OTHER PSYCHOACTIVE DRUGS

Madness as a Mixture Between Various Causes

Masters in his book Bedlam:

‘From the earliest times up to the nineteenth century there have been three basic approaches to mental illness: Magical, organic and psychological.’

Physical ills were tangible and responded to practical treatment. With psychiatric type problems there was less obvious ‘treatment’ available. But probably some cross-over. Classical assumption that all forces not identifiable as humanly caused were caused by some outside, malignant force: this includes natural events like wind, snow, natural disaster and disease. These forces of disease forced the condition into their bodies, possibly stealing their souls or causing evil spirits to enter them. Sympathetic magic was required.

‘Primitive man’s attitude to mental illness was therefore that it was caused by a tangible outside force, be it human or super-natural, and that the force had to be fought and vanquished by magic ritual, just as a human enemy would be fought and vanquished by the force of his own body or weapon.’

‘The organic attitude which followed was inspired in the sixth and seventh century BCE by Greek philosophers. The middle ages obscured all this with religious and magical dogma but the Renaissance began a return to rational scientific thought.’

He dates the psychological approach to the 19th century onwards- MUCH OF THE ABOVE SEEMS TENDENTIOUS- COMPARE WITH OTHER SOURCES. - COMPARE WITH OTHER SOURCES.

Social Treatment of Madness

Masters:

‘The one factor that was not employed in ancient Palestine, Greece, or Rome was isolation. It was only in the middle ages that society began to shut away its mentally ill.’

(BUT WHAT ABOUT BANISHMENT?)

Greece

Ducey and Simon give a comprehensive summary of the major models of mind and madness in Roman thought and the relationship between illness and stresses within the societies.

Ducey and Simon note on the Homeric tradition that:

1/ Mental activity is seen as an interaction between the person and his parts, between different parts and between the person and an outside agent.

2/ Mental processes are seen as coming from outside the person. (My note cf. Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of te Bicameral Brain)

3/ No sharp mind/body distrinction.

4/ Language is used render public and observable activity that we might represent as individual.

5/ Disturbance and turmoil is not seen as bizarre, but as intelligible within context.

6/ No distinction between reality and phantasy.

Ducey and Simon note:

‘The chief form of mental disturbance in [Homer’s] poems is not out-and-out madness (as depicted in the tragedies), but rather irrrational but intelligible behaviour under the pressure of conflicts and competing demands.’

Ducey and Simon note that:

‘Dodds (Dodds ER The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley: University of California Press.)…has demonstrated how the notion of ate, a divinely sent "madness" or "infatuation", serves as a culturally syntonic explanation of the kind of irrationality mentioned above.’

Ducey and Simon note:

‘Food, wine and certain marvellous drugs like nepenthe, "no pain", administered by Helen (Odyssey, IV:221), may relieve or abolish mental anguish.’

Ducey and Simon note on the treatment of madness in Greek tragedies (Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles among others) that:

‘The most vivid and dramatic portraits of madness are in tragedy. … The medical literature, by contrast, presents hardly any detailed portrayal. …In many if not all respects, the portraits are extremely accurate by modern clinical standards. …The madness is set in a context of unbearable conflict that leads to a breakdown of reality testing and/or social judgement…. Madness is also regarded as a sickness, with the possibility of cure, though this may be partially metaphorical. …The Madman is regarded with fear and awe. The Furies and their variants are expressions of the popular notion of madness as a revenge. These variants include Mania – "Madness" – and Lussa – "she who loosens" or "unhinges"…. The frequent representation of madness in these dramas… suggests that it must have been somewhat familiar and intelligible to the audience.’

Ducey and Simon note on the Platonic reaction to madness:

‘Madness is a species of disease, to be taken either metaphorically or by analogy to diseases of the body. … Psyche …becomes gradually equated with the rational in man. … Madness becomes equated with the dominance of impulsive, appetitive functions of man, and sanity with the dominance of the rational, calculative, abstracting, and categorizing function.’

Ducey and Simon note on the Hippocratic model:

‘…Human mental functioning, including mental states, originates from the brain. …The functioning of the brain … depends on the right admixture of various elements (e.g. the humors, such as bile and phlegm) and on various qualities (such as "moist" and "hot".) …Different diseases and different temperaments are associated with the predominance of one or other of the humors. …The brain functions as an "interpreter" or "translator" of incoming sensation…. One cause for disturbances … may be the patient’s poor regimen of life. … Treatment … consists of trying to restore the proper balance with drugs, regimens, or both. …There is no hint of verbal psychotherapy.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘The cult of Aesculapius was influential in Greek medicine for centuries; indeed, it is only in the era of Greek enlightenment in the seventh and sixth centuries BC that its prominence began to decline.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘Hundreds of Aesculapian temples were built in different parts of the ancient world, most of them in Greece; the foremost of these temples was in Epidaurus. The temples were situated in places of beauty, with adjacent baths, gardens, and hillsides. Possibly the diseased patient gained inspiration and hope from the splendor and magnificence of the Aesculapian temples. Not all who wished treatment were admitted to the temples; if a supplicant’s disease was too severe, he was turned away, for the Aesculapian cult depended on its reputation. Once he had been screened and admitted, the patient received instruction in personal cleanliness and dietetics. The most important treatment was temple, or "incubation", sleep. Accounts of what transpired just prior to and during the patient’s sleep are not fully in accord. Apparently, while sleeping in the temple the patient would receive dream inspirations or instructions from the Aesculapian priests; the dream was supposed to reveal to the patient what he needed to do to get better.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘Hippocrates (460-377 BC) applied the speculations of the philosophers of medicine and combined them with bedside observations. Hence he is called the father of Medicine and was the first to attempt to explain consistently all diseases on the basis of natural causes. For example, Hippocrates wrote that in his opinion those who first considered epilepsy "divine" called it a "sacred malady" to conceal their ignorance of its nature…’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘Psychiatry owes a great deal to the Hippocratic emphasis on clinical medicine; it also owes to him the recognition that the brain is man’s most important organ.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘The Hippocratic physicians described for the first time organic toxic deliria, as well as the symptoms of depression we call melancholia, which they thought was caused by an accumulation of black bile. They also noted the characteristics of puerperal insanity – in modern terms, "post-partum" psychosis" – described phobias, and coined the word "hysteria" for a condition, still prevalent, that they thought was specific to women. They thought hysteria was caused by a wandering uterus that had been loosened from its moorings in the pelvic cavity. Perhaps they suspected a sexual a sexual origin for hysterical symptoms, inasmuch as they recommended marriage and intercourse as cures for the condition.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘The Hippocratics also inaugurated the first classification of mental illness, and one that was extremely rational. They included in this schema epilepsy, mania (excitement), melancholia, and paranoia. They made the first attempts to describe personality in terms of their humoral theories, and even today we speak of choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine or melancholy people.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘The Pythagoreans … were the first to employ music therapy with emotionally ill patients. (Gordon BL Medicine Throughout Antiquity, Philadelphia: FA Davis Co., 1949)’

Walker notes:

‘… Plato, when he drafted his Utopian Laws, [proposed]: ‘if anyone be insane, let him note be seen openly in the town, but let his kinsfolk watch over him as best they may, under penalty of a fine (Plato, The Laws, XI, 934).’

Madness as a Mixture Between Various Causes

Porter says ‘in On the Sacred Disease, which claimed madness as well as epilepsy for medicine, the Hippocratic author stated that ‘those maddened through bile are noisy, evil-doers and restless, always doing something inopportune…’

Porter: Herodotus described King Cambyses of Persia mocking religion- only the insane would mock the Gods. Ajax slaughtered sheep thinking they were enemy soldiers. ‘Violence, grief, bloodlust and cannibalism were commonly taken as signs of insanity’ .

Walter Bromberg gives a review of issues in early medicine and reactions to madness in The Mind of Man: A History of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis:

Bromberg notes:

‘In the main , the Greek masses inherited from Asia and Northern Africa the conception prevalent in pre-Hellenic times that mental disease was due to infestation by swarms of malignant spirits. On the other hand, the literate Greek of classic times considered madness a visitation from the gods or due to the malevolence of the Furies (three goddesses of vengeance). The insane were often treated with humorous latitude, as judged from the Greek comedies.’

‘…Greek healing was a mid-point between pure super-naturalism and rationality, liberally sprinkled with respect for the healing power of the gods. Temples erected to the god, called Aesculapia (Asklepieia), were situated on high hills or near springs whose waters had medicinal values. Here the sons of Aesculapius utilized physical means to cure disease through rest, dietetics, massage, baths, exercise, and a hygienic life. Patients were bathed and massaged by skilled attendants, and a type of mental suggestion called ‘incubation’ was used.’

‘The patient, having entered the temple or the halls especially built for incubation, lay down on the floor on a pallet. In these impressive surroundings, the god Asclepius revealed himself directly to everyone who needed his help.’

The Mind of Man Bromberg

‘Plato suggested that mental disorder was partly somatic, partly moral and partly divine in origin…’

Masters: Plato attempted to define insanity and divided it into madness and ignorance.

Masters: Hippocrates was mostly concerned with physical maladies (as the ‘Father of Medicine’) but also considered ‘insanity’ in ‘The Sacred Disease’ as he considered what would now often be seen as epilepsy. Traditionally madness had been seen as ‘divine’ or ‘sacred’, but he said that people only believed this because they were ignorant; he believed madness sprang from the brain being too hot, cold, dry, moist or humid. Phlegm and Bile were out of balance in those who were judged insane- excess phlegm led to placidity (depression) and excess bile led to vociferous and malignant actions (mania).

WL Jones:

‘ Hippocrates (460-355BC) Born on the island of Cos and practised there and in Thesaly and at Athens. Died at Larissa. The collection of his aphorisms is obviously based on keen clinical observation. His high ethical standards find expression in the Hippocratic Oath.’

Masters: Herodotus divided madness into two categories- that caused by divine influence and that caused by ‘natural’ causes.

Rosen:

‘...Herodotus recognized two explanations of mental derangement, one attributing it to supernatural or divine intervention, the other to natural causes which disturb psychic activity. Broadly speaking, these two views represent respectively the popular and the medical attitudes towards mental abnormality prevalent in Graeco-Roman culture. As the extant texts indicate, Greek medicine very early rejected any supernatural explanation of mental disorder, viewing it in essentially physiologic term, a position which was maintained from the time of Hippocrates to that of Galen. Mental abnormality was considered a disease, or a symptom of one, caused in the same way as disease of the body. This view was based on the theory which was used to explain not only mental disease, but disease in general, namely the humoral theory. According to this doctrine, the body was composed of four humours, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, which were produced by physiologic processes by various organs of the body. Furthermore, each humour was endowed with a basic quality, such as heat, cold, dryness, and moistness. Disease devloped when internal or external factors produced an excess of one of the humours. The resulting imbalance of these basic qualities acted on organs to produce deleterious effects. Madness, the disease of the mind, was produced in this fashion by excess of a humour. Black bile was a peculiarly potent cause, when present in abundance under certain conditions, of various forms of mental illness, particularly the condition called melancholia.'

Madness as Supernatural/Divine Intervention

Rosen on divine madness:

‘Plato has such inspired madness in mind when he remarks in the Timaeus that no one achieves inspiration and prophetic truth when in his right mind. Divination is only possible for those who have lost consciousness in sleep, or when the mind is affected by disease or possessions. (Plato, Timaeus 71 D-E) This association between madness and inspiration receives its most distinctive and positive exposition in the Phaedrus, where Socrates affirms the blessing of divine madness. Plato distinguishes two kinds of madness, one resulting from human ailments, the other from a divine disturbance of the accepted norms of social behaviour, and in the Phaedrus Socrates points out that the latter may in reality be a divine boon.

‘The greatest blessings come by way of madness, indeed of madness that is heaven sent. It was when they were mad that the prophetess at Delphi and the priestess at Dodona achieved so much for which both states and individuals in Greece are thankful: when sane they did little or nothing. As for Sybil and others who have the power of inspired prophecy have so often foretold the future to so many, and guided them aright, I need not dwell on what is obvious to everyone. (Plato Phaedrus 265A, 244 A-B)’

After setting forth the virtues of divine madness, Socrates divides it into four types: prophetic, telestic, poetic and erotic. These types will not be considered here, but some of them will be considered below in examining the nature of madness and the criteria used to determine its presence.’

Madness as Physical Disfunction

Rosen notes that Hippocrates in The Sacred Disease

...‘ denies that any one illness is more divine than another, and affirms that all diseases have natural causes discoverable by the human mind.’

Madness as a Reaction to Social Stress

Madness as ‘Just Deserts’

Rosen’ :

‘The infliction of madness for refusing to accept or actively opposing the worship of Dionysius is a recurrent theme in a group of legends concerned with the introduction of the Dionysiac religion in Greece.’

Social Treatment of Madness

Rosen:

‘Were deranged individuals ever chosen as ritual scapegoats? Vaughan conjectured that ‘at certain periods in the history of Greece madmen, by reason of their supposed selection by the gods were at times offered for sacrifice. (Reference Vaughan AC 1919)’

Rosen concludes that there is only a single example of this (in Strabo). Therefore he discounts this form of scape-goating.

Rosen:

‘...it is clear from various sources that the madman, even when regarded as in some way touched by the divine, was a person to be shunned. Contact with holiness, like contact with its opposite uncleaness, was perilous and to be avoided. In fifth century Greece, madness was widely considered the consequence of divine curse, and an insane person was therefore polluted and a thing of evil omen. Meeting a madman exposed one to the damaging power dwelling in such an individual.’

Rosen:

‘Another means of avoiding contact with the mentally disordered was to drive them away by throwing clods and stones at them.’ Greece

Rosen notes that:

‘Behaviour towards the mentally disordered reflected these attitudes. No effort was made to conceal madmen or mental defectives from public view, so that they were a visible part of everyday experience. By and large, community attitudes towards those individuals were compounded of fear and contempt, mingled to a lesser extent with an element of compassion. Fear of madness persisted , partly as an extension of earlier views, and partly because of possible violence on the part of the deranged. In addition, the view that madness was shameful led many to regard the mentally ill as lacking both the sensibilities and the mental attributes of human beings. Deprived in large measure of a socially acceptable position defined in religious or supernatural terms, the mentally disordered required a role and a position which enabled the social group to tolerate them. To what extent and in what form a society can accept conspicuously abnormal persons is a perennial problem which has been solved in various ways. In antiquity, the mentally disordered became objects of ridicule, scorn or abuse, and remained public butts for the amusement of the populace.

‘Evidence for such behaviour is to be found scattered throughout the Greek and Latin literature from the fifth century BC.’

Rosen:

‘Clearly in Graeco-Roman antiquity it was possible for individuals with mental and emotional disorders to function more or less adequately in society so long as the behavioural environment which they constructed for themselves did not result in undue psychological distortion and socio-cultural impairment. Moreover, culturally constituted systems, particularly religious beliefs and practices provided a means by which such individuals might effectively achieve some form of adjustment to society.’

Rosen:

‘On the whole, Greek and Roman Law took account of the madman chiefly in relation to the protection of property, an to insure that he did not harm other members of the community.’

Rosen:

‘A slave who became mentally deranged was probably driven out into the street to wander about and be stoned.’

Rosen:

‘Clearly neither the state nor the law felt any obligation to the mentally ill. Where the law was invoked, it was to provide protection against the madman, but little or nothing was done to protect him from himself and from others.’

Rosen:

‘...the care of the mentally ill both among the Greeks and the Romans was left to their relatives and friends. Antiquity had no asylums or other institutions for the treatment or custody ofthe mentally ill. ...there were two methods of restraining the insane. The mentally deranged individual who was not too disturbed and whose family could afford to do so might be placed in charge of a personal attendant responsible for his conduct. In this situation he might simply be restrained at home. If there was a danger that the insane person would harm himself, he was not only confined to his home but tied up or placed in stocks as well.’

Rosen :

‘… the psychotherapeutic approach of a physician such as Soranus is not unexpected. His description of his handling of patients with delusions and hallucinations, the endeavours to avoid and aggravating influences, the use of graduated mental exercises, games and recreation is strongly reminiscent of the milieu therapy employed by Tuke at the York Retreat in the eighteenth century. Even where physical restraint is necessary Soranus insisted on gentleness.’ TO ROME

Rosen:

‘(some)...physicians, however, advocated violent physical and physiological measures. Severe physical restraint, extremely limited diets, keeping the patient in a dark room, violent purges, excessive bleeding, plunging the patient suddenly into cold water, beating and whipping him- all were employed in antiquity and continued to be used in succeeding centuries.’

After considering Imhotep and Incubation (see above) WL Jones goes on to say:

‘ Temple sleep was also prominent in the medicine of Ancient Greece. There, the temples honoured Asclepios, the god of healing, who had learned his art from Apollo through Chiron, the patron of surgery. Famous temples of healing were at Cos, Athens and Pergamos; the most famous was at Epidaurus. The snakes in the temples were supposed to lick the eyelids of the sleepers and induce healing dreams.’ (Referenced to Guthrie, D A History of Medicine, London: Nelson)

‘Hence, the symbol of Asclepios was the serpent entwined around his staff. Although mystical and supernatural methods were prominent, the priestly interpretations of dreams could induce confession and relief of conflicts, an effective psychotherapy. In addition , physical treatments in the form of diet, bathing and exercise promoted health.’

Masters: The mad were not held criminally responsible- compensation or exile rather than punishment as such. If slaves were insane, they could not be sold. Families were expected to take on the burden of care for the insane person- else wandering and being a figure of fun was the outcome. Physical restraint was used. Physical treatments were similar to those for physical illnesses- bleeding, purging etc..

Masters notes:

‘Medical and psychiatric treatment of the mentally ill remained practically static from the ancient world right up to …(the nineteenth century)…. Purges, hot and cold baths, bleeding and physical restraint were used at the time of the Greek and Roman empires and remained in use until the middle of the nineteenth century.’

Porter:

‘Graeco-Roman law sought to prevent the mad from destroying life, limb and property, and made provision for guardians for the insane. Insanity was a family responsibility and there were no lunatic asylums. The seriously disturbed were restrained at home, while others were allowed to wander, though, as evil spirits (keres) might fly out of them to possess other people, the crazed were feared and shunned.’

Rome:

Mora notes:

‘…the enlightened treatment of the mentally ill recommended by their most illustrious representatives, Aclepiades and Celsus, the author of the classic De re Medica (both first century BC): both recommended isolation of the mentally ill from excessive stimuli in quiet surroundings, use of music, reading in groups and dramatic performance.’

Mora notes:

‘In his treatise On Acute and Chronic Disease (Caelius Aurelianus 1950 On Acute Diseases and On Chronic Disease, Eng. Trans. New York: Dutton (Repr. New York: Dover, n.d.)) Caelius Aurelianus (ist century AD), reported the views of the contemporaries Aretaeus of Cappadocia (who described forms of melancholia which terminated in mania) and Soranus; both recommended humanitarian principles in the management of the mentally ill: they had to be kept in quiet rooms and away from relatives, cared for by sympathetic personnel, subjected to the minimal degree of physical restrictions, and occupied in various intellectual activities.’

Mora notes:

‘…the greatest Roman physician was Galen (ca. 130-200 AD), whose theory of the natural, vital and animal spirits of Platonic origin (essentially based on the notion of a progressive purification of the essence of life from the abdomen through the heart to the brain) persisted until the 17th century. Less known is that in his treatise on the passions, he stressed their role in the causation of mental disorders (Galen 1963 On the Passions and Errors of the Soul Trans. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press). Strictly, medical treatment of mental diseases consisted of the use of vapors, baths, diet and, more specifically, emetics and cathartics (mainly black hellebore), which in their intrinsic meaning of purification from pollution ("miasma") through purification ("catharsis"), also continued for centuries.’

Mora notes:

‘For centuries the judicial position of the insane was continuously refined and reached the highest possible systematisation in the Corpus Juris Civilis during the late Roman Empire. Mora notes. Specific norms were issued for establishing the criminal responsibility of the alleged mentally ill and persons temporarily incapacitated by the influence of drunkeness, by unusual passions, and so on, and for deciding – by judges, not by physicians! – on the ability on the part of the mentally ill to contract marriage, to be divorced, to dispose of his possessions, to leave a will, and to testify (Semalaigne A 1869 Etudes historiques de l’alienation mentale dans l’antiquite Paris: Asselin). Under the Emperor Justinian (483-565 AD) this legislation was codified in the definite form which persisted for centuries in the history of jurisprudence.’

Mora notes

‘

Mora notes:

‘

Ducey and Simon note:

‘The earliest mention of madmen in Rome occurs in the Twelve Tables, the Roman codification into law of traditional customs and practices. They date from about 450 BC. In Table Five, "If a man is raving mad, rightful authority over his person and chattels shall belong to his agnates (blood relatives through his father’s line) or to his clansmen." It is quite remarkable that this basic law remained virtually the only legal principle applied to madmen throughout the following nine centuries or more. Lunacy (furor, stronger than insania) seems to have been considered curable and therefore was no bar to full legal rights during ‘lucid intervals’ (Buckland WW 1932 A Textbook of Roman Law from Augustus to Justinian 2nd Ed. Cambridge: CUP). No legal definition of a furiosus ever existed, so that a determination of sanity had to be made separately in each individual case (Schulz F 1951 Classical Roman Law Oxford: Clarendon Press.)’

Ducey and Simon note from the Roman comic tradition exemplified by Plautus and Terence, madness:

‘…In the popular mind, the madman’s major characteristic is proneness to violence, which must be met with coercion or reciprocal violence. …Two explanations of violence are offered side by side without contradiction, a physiological and a demonic one…. All behaviour exhibited normally by a sane person, like justifiable anger, may be used as evidence of madness. …Although charges of madness and feigned madness abound in the comedies, no real madness ever occurs…’

Ducey and Simon note of the Roman tragic tradition, e.g. Ennius:

‘Despite madness…delusions can be recognised as delusions. Madness is … a terrifying and painfully real "illness". …An internal, private world is clearly demarcated from one’s external behaviour, unlike in Homer.’

Ducey and Simon note on the Roman Philosophical tradition, e.g. Lucretius and Cicero:

‘Mental disorder is fully recognised as an "illness", different from normal behaviour and analogous to physical sickness. …A sharp dichotomy between external causation of behaviour and individual motivation for it is clearly demarcated. … More explicitly than ever before, an internal, psychologically based model of mental disorder is offered here. … Man acts in in the neurotic fashion…because he is trying to avoid the full force of depression that arises from the unconscious fear of death. …Lucretius anticipates to a surprising degree the theories and outlook of Freud and modern psychoanalysis.’

Ducey and Simon note on Cicero:

‘Of greater historical importance, in his role as transmitter of Greek thought (especially Stoic and Academic philosophy), is Cicero, philospher of the first century BC. Besides expanding and enriching the vocabulary of emotions (Lang FR, 1972 Psychological terminology in the Tusculans J. Hist Behav Sciences8, 419-436), he makes a distinction between insania and furor, both usually translated as "madness". Furor is more serious and can befall even a wise man; it apparently involves delusion…. Insania may be translated as "folly," as it concerns wordly values, like miserliness and lack of good sense (6,III, v). Hellebore may help the former but would be pointless in the latter.’

Ducey and Simon note:

‘

Ducey and Simon note:

‘

Ducey and Simon note:

‘

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘The two most significant Roman contributions to the development of psychiatry were made by a philosopher, Cicero, and a Methodist physician Soranus.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘Cicero … believed in the psychological causation of melancholia. "What we call furor they call melancholia, as if the reason were affected only by a black bile and not disturbed as often by violent rage, or fear, or grief." (Cicero Tusculan Disputations p237 Trans. JE King, London: William Heinemann 1927)’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘In the … Tusculan Disputations Cicero says : "The cure of grief, and of other disorders, is one and the same, in that they are voluntary, and founded on opinion; we take them on ourselves because it seems right so to do. Philosophy undertakes to eradicate this error as a root of all our evils: let us therefore surrender ourselves to be instructed by it, and suffer ourselves to be cured; for whilst these evils have possession of us, we not only cannot be happy, but cannot be in our right minds."

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘The Methodist physician, Soranus … had a student called Caelius Aurelianus, who put down some of his master’s ideas in a volume called On Acute Disease and on Chronic Disease. Seventeen chapters in the book are devoted to "phrenitis", diseases of the mind. They were called "phrenitis" because the seat of the mind was considered to be located in the diaphragm, (phren).’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘Soranus was a most enlightened physician in his attitude toward the mentally ill and refused to treat them harshly. "the place [in which patients with phrenitis should be lodged] should be lighted," he says, "through high windows, for it often happens in this disease that unguarded patients, in their madness, jump out of windows." Whether a patient is placed in a warm room or a cold room should depend upon what the patient feels is most comfortable, and the only time Soranus considered restraint advisable for the excitable patient was when there was a danger that he would injure himself. Whatever restraints were used were to be humanely applied: "Use wool or clothing to protect places where the ropes are tied, lest the harm done the patients be greater than the advantages gained in keeping them quiet." He was outspoken in his refusal to treat mental patients harsly as were the great reformists in the latter part of the eighteenth century, who finally released the patients from their chains.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘Soranus’ management of the mentally ill was directly opposed to methods advocated by Celsus, who believed that rough treatment would frighten a patient out of mental illness. Celsus chained patients, starved them, isolated them in total darkness, and administered cathartics in his efforts to frighten them into health. In contrast, Soranus believed he could reduce the discomfort of the mentally ill by talking to them, and he recommended discussing with the patient his occupation or other subjects that might interest him.’

Alexander and Selesnick note:

‘One of the astonishing lessons that Soranus left for psychiatric posterity, and which was often repeated in the history of psychiatry, consists in the fact that even though he described mental illness in terms of an organic mechanical disturbance, he treated the mentally ill by psychological measures. Soranus minimized the utilization of drugs and other physical methods, stressing the importance of the relationship between the physician and the patient.’

Sinason 1992 notes p 59: DATE OF CICERO: 106-43 BC

‘As Cicero commented in his ‘Discussions at Tusculum’ (trans. M Grant 1982, p112),

"When Democritus lost his sight, it is true that he could no longer distinguish black from white, yet he could distinguish good from bad, just from unjust, right from wrong … whereas if it had been the comprehension of ideas that he lacked, a happy life would have been out of the question."’

Bromberg gives the origin of the word insanity:

‘Aulus Cornelius Celsus (25 BC-50 AD)…is said to have introduced the word insania (insanity) into medical literature…’

Madness as a Mixture Between Various Causes

Madness as Supernatural Intervention

WL Jones notes:

‘From the Greeks, the Romans adopted the same methods and there was an Asclepion on the Insula Tiberina in Rome from the third century BC. The legend is that the Romans sent to Epidaurus for help in combating a plague. As the emissary’s ship returned to Rome, a sacred snake from the Greek Temple slipped ashore to the island. The Plague died out and the Romans erected a temple to Aesculapius in gratitude’(Referenced to Risley M 1962 The House of Healing London: Robert Hale)

‘In Roman Britain there was a healing temple at Lydney on the banks of the Severn’

POSSIBLE REFERENCE TO PAST HISTORY OF THIS IN MICHAEL WOODS, IN SEARCH OF ENGLAND APPROX. PAGE 240

Madness as a Reaction to Social Stress

Soranus (second century CE) stated the causes of mania as ‘continual sleeplessness, excesses of venery, anger, grief, anxiety, or superstitious fear, a shock or blow, intense straining of the senses and the mind in study, business, or other ambitious pursuits’.

Rosen :

‘In view of the fact that psychological factors, such as grief, excessive anger, anxiety, and straining the mind and the senses through study, business, or other ambitious pursuits, were also regarded as causes of mental illness, the psycho-therapeutic approach of a physician such as Soranus is not unexpected. TO ROME

Madness as Physical Disfunction

Bromberg: Galen (DATE) held that mania was a disease of yellow bile.

WL Jones:

‘Henbane was recommended by Aretaeus in the second century.’

This for ?mania/depression.

Social Treatment of Madness

Rosen

‘(throwing stones at madmen)... was current in Rome, to judge from a remark by one of the Advocati in the Poenulus by Plautus. He refused to run through the streets because people would pursue him as a madman and throw stones.’

Mora notes that under the Corpus Juris Civilis:

‘Specific norms were issued for establishing the criminal responsibility of the alleged mentally ill and persons temporarily incapacitated by the influence of drunkenness, by unusual passions, and so on, and for deciding- by judges, not by physicians!- on the ability on the part of the mentally ill to contract marriage, to be divorced, to dispose of possessions, to leave a will, and to testify.’

Bromberg quotes Celsus DATE about the treatment of mental illness: For:

‘…depression … rubbing twice a day is to be adopted; if the patient is strong, frequent exercise as well: vomiting on an empty stomach. … In addition to the above: the motions are to be kept very soft, causes of fright excluded, good hope rather put forward; entertainment sought by story-telling, and by games, especially by those with which the patient was wont to be attracted when sane; work of his, if there is any, should be praised, and set out before his eyes; his depression should be gently reproved as being without cause; he should have it pointed out to him now and again how in the very things which trouble him there may be cause of rejoicing rather than solicitude.’

This is humanistic treatment, however:

Bromberg quotes Celsus DATE on the treatment of delusional or chronic situations:

‘If however, it is the mind that deceives the madman, he is best treated by certain tortures. When he says or does anything wrong, he is to be coerced by starvation, fetters and flogging. He is to be forced both to fix his attention and to learn something and to memorize it; for thus … little by little he will be forced by fear to consider doing what he is doing. … To be thoroughly frightened is beneficial in this illness and so , in general, is anything which thoroughly agitates the spirit. For it is possible that some change may be effected when the mind has been withdrawn from its previous state. It also makes a difference, whether from time to time without cause the patient laughs, or is sad and dejected; for the hilarity of madness is better treated by those terrors I have mentioned.’

Bromberg notes that the Roman culture which he describes using Garrison’s words: ‘dead-level respectability of Roman commerce and law’, neglected humanistic approaches to madness.

‘It was not until pride in Roman efficiency softened and the Roman empire began to crumble, and paganism gave way to Christianity (AD 392), that traces of a humane spirit toward the mentally distraught appeared.’ IS THIS SELF SERVING?

Bromberg: Soranus, however, maintained that rest, diet, massage, recreation and games were useful for those suffering anxiety and grief. However this was expensive and therefore only available to the rich.

CATHERINE NOTES- CALL IT THE OT DEPARTMENT

Palestine

Miller notes:

‘References to states of mental disturbance are frequently found in the bible. Deuteronomy 28:23 [sic – actually 28], 34 views madness as punishment for disobeying the commandments.’

Miller notes:

‘The Bible does not speak of treatment of mental illness or recognize insanity as an illness. On the contrary, it was enjoined that the person who was seen to be possessed by spirits should be stoned to death (Lev. 20:27); yet the bible abounds in counsel for mental health, usually with an ethical intention. In Proverbs it is held that understanding is "a well-spring of life" (16:22) and that "a merry heart doeth good like medicine" (17:22)’

Miller notes:

‘In the Talmud mention of mental illness is generally of a legal nature. The episodic nature of mental illness is taken into account on several occasions and there are references to periods when the person is of lucid or unsound mind. There are also suggestions of a possible classification of mental illness such as mental defect, confusion, acute and cyclical psychoses, and those which result from physical illness.’

Miller notes:

‘The Talmud recognizes mental illness and is chary of accepting popular definitions such as: "He who goes out alone at night, who sleeps in the cemetery, and tears his clothes" (Tosef., Ter. 1:3 and cf. Hag 3b)’

Miller notes:

‘The word shoteh, which contains the idea of walking to and fro without purpose, is used to describe the mentally ill.’

Miller notes:

‘The legal and social implications of insanity are frequently referred to in the Talmud. The mentally ill are not responsible for the damage they cause and those who injure them must bear the responsibility; the insane are nor responsible for the shame they cause. They may not marry but, contrary to Greek concepts, in periods of lucidity the individual is considered healthy and capabl from every other point of view.’

Miller notes:

‘The Talmud sets very little store by magical medicines and cures for mental illness which were then current among the nations and were frequently found among Jews in the Middle Ages. It prefers to admit frankly the lack of effective treatment.’

Biblical recommendation that the Mad should be placed in prison or in stocks

Jeremiah 29:26 The LORD hath made thee priest in the stead of Jehoiada the priest, that ye should be officers in the house of the LORD, for every man [that is] mad, and maketh himself a prophet, that thou shouldest put him in prison, and in the stocks.

Biblical suggestion that the Mad are dangerous to the point of injury and killing of others

Proverbs 26:18 As a mad [man] who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death.

Madness portrayed as unreason

Kings-2 9:11 Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: and [one] said unto him, [Is] all well? wherefore came this mad [fellow] to thee? And he said unto them, Ye know the man, and his communication.

Kings-2 9:12 And they said, [It is] false; tell us now. And he said, Thus and thus spake he to me, saying, Thus saith the LORD, I have anointed thee king over Israel.

Existence of Madness

Rosen notes:

‘The Mishna, that is, the oral law which was developed on the basis of the Scriptures over hundreds of years (ca. 500BC-AD200), employs the word shoteh for the mentally disordered in general, apparently including under this term both the insane and the mentally defective. The mentally disordered person was regarded as one deprived of his reason and therefore mentally incompetent. For this reason, such individuals are lumped together with minors, and deaf-mutes, since none of these groups could be held legally responsible for their actions.’

Bromberg: He quotes Sam 21 13-15

‘So he changed his behaviour before them and feigned himself mad in their hands, and made marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard. Then said Achish to his servants, ‘Do I lack madness, that you have brought me this fellow to play the madman in my presence?’ DATE

Rosen:

‘When David broke with Saul after the latter tried to kill him, he first fled south into Judea. Then recognizing his inability to withstand the royal power, David decided to seek refuge elsewhere. As a possible protector he turned to Achish the Philistine, King of Gath, the city from which Goliath had come. According to one version of this event, David, uncertain of the reception which he, a former enemy, might recive, resorted to a ruse and pretended to be mad.

‘So he changed his behaviour before them [the Philistines] and feigned himself mad in their hands, and made marks on the doors of the gates, and let his spittle run down his beard. Then said Achish to his servants, ‘Do I lack madness, that you have brought me this fellow to play the madman in my presence?’’ DATE

This episode as well as other passages in the Old Testament show clearly that mental disorders occurred and were recognized as such among ancient Hebrews and the people who were their neighbours. Although the incidence or prevalence of such conditions cannot be known, the available information does permit the delineation of certain forms of psychopathology, of ideas concerning their causes, and of ways in which those afflicted were regarded and dealt with by the community.’

Rosen notes the history of Saul, the first King of Israel (reigned c 1020-1000 BCE) who is remembered by the phrase ‘Is Saul also among the prophets’. This is because of the doubt raised by his emotional instability. This is an extremely well documented case and Rosen gives full details.

Rosen:

‘For a number of reasons, the story of Saul, king of Israel, is of more than passing interest. Not only does it provide specific detail about an early case of mental and emotional disorder, but in doing so also offers a causal explanation and describes a form of therapy. Moreover, a consideration of the terminology used to describe Saul’s behaviour, when taken together with other evidence, enables us to delineate certain social attitudes towards the mentally disordered and to others who appeared to act like them.’

Madness as Supernatural Intervention

Rosen:

‘The belief that illness was inflicted by a supernatural power or by an angry deity as a punishment for sin was widespread among the peoples of the ancient world. Among the Hebrews, those who presumed to disobey God’s commandments and to violate his ordinances were threatened with dire retribution, including his curse of madness. Deuteronomy, which dates from the seventh century BC but rests on ancient tradition, contains a warning by Moses to his people that if they

‘Will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes...the Lord will smite you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind...’

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