Exploring Visual Impairment in Ancient Rome

Abstract

Blindness and varying degrees of impairment were widespread in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This chapter sets out to redress the balance on the study of blindness in Classical antiquity by shifting the emphasis to ancient Rome. It discusses the reported causes of impairment resulting from disease, injury and old age. The chapter evaluates how these accounts feed into a well established discourse on vision and its importance in the Roman world. In the modern Western world, the terms partially sighted, low vision, legally blind and totally blind are commonly used to denote degrees of sight and blindness. The terminology and correlative set of criteria are well defined by the World Health Organisation under the disability category of visual impairment. The chapter also broadly considers what life may have been like for visually impaired Romans and talks about the different diseases and injuries in the ancient Rome. Keywords:ancient Rome; blindness; classical antiquity; Greco-Roman world; impairment; World Health Organisation