Abstract
Roman sculpture has often given the impression that it provides such a precise simulacrum of the bodies of ancient Romans that their portraits can be studied autoptically as if they were a patient. Specialists in medicine and art-history have studied Roman sculptures to the point of producing real medical diagnoses, generating a research niche which, while controversial, has led to some interesting discoveries. However, scholars had sometimes misunderstood certain elements of ancient sculptures, interpreting aesthetic choices as clinical signs. In this article several portraits from the Republican period to the Tetrarchic age will be observed, to assess if the diagnoses made on them are due to actual physical features of the individuals portrayed or not. This article analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the study of ancient pathologies through Roman sculpture to delineate the limits and the possibilities of such an approach.
Highlights
The available sources for the study of mental illness in the Roman world comprise of a limited range of literary medical, philosophical, and occasionally legal treatises
Various types of madness are distinguished in Roman literature, most of which are concordant with and all of which apparently derive from Cicero’s distinction between insania and furor (Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 3.5.11); it was difficult to explain the origins of mental disorders until Galen spread theories derived from the Hippocratic tradition in Rome
This physiological conception of mental illness implied that any mental disorder had a physical origin
Summary
Roman sculpture has often given the impression that it provides such a precise simulacrum of the bodies of ancient Romans that their portraits can be studied autoptically as if they were a patient. Specialists in medicine and art-history have studied Roman sculptures to the point of producing real medical diagnoses, generating a research niche which, while controversial, has led to some interesting discoveries. Scholars had sometimes misunderstood certain elements of ancient sculptures, interpreting aesthetic choices as clinical signs. In this article several portraits from the Republican period to the Tetrarchic age will be observed, to assess if the diagnoses made on them are due to actual physical features of the individuals portrayed or not. This article analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the study of ancient pathologies through Roman sculpture to delineate the limits and the possibilities of such an approach
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