“I, Lykophron’s thick book, though full of songs,
was once obscure, possessing unseeable visions.
But now by means of Hermean craft Isaac Tzetzes
Has set me free, once he loosened my well-woven restraints.”
This week in honor of Halloween and a break between projects, I have bowed to an obsession with lycanthropy. In my searching, I discovered a trove of ancient Greek medical treatises on the diagnosing and treatment of the disease
Oribasius is said to have studied medicine in Alexandria; he later served as the court doctor to Julian the Apostate. He wrote several encyclopedic summaries of medical knowledge at the time. The text produced for a friend’s son (Synopsis ad Eustathium) is identical to that attributed to Paulus of Aegina and seems to form the core of medical treatises on lycanthropy.
On Lycanthropy:
“Men who are afflicted with lycanthropy go out at night and imitate wolves in every way, spending time until daybreak among the gravestones. You will recognize that someone is suffering from this by the following symptoms. They appear pale and look weak; they have dry eyes and cannot cry. You may observe that their eyes are hollow and their tongue is especially dry: they cannot really produce saliva. They are thus thirsty and in addition they have wounded shins from scraping the ground frequently.
These are the symptoms; for treatment it is important to recognize that this is a type of melancholy which you may treat at the time the disease is noticed by cutting open the veins and draining blood until the patient almost passes out. Let him be washed in a sweet bath. After rubbing him down with milk-whey for three days, apply a pumpkin salve* to him on the second and third day. Following these cleansings, anoint him with the antidote for viper-venom and do the rest of the things prescribed for melancholy. When they disease has already come over those who are accustomed to sleepwalk, anoint them with lotion. And rub opium on their ears and nostrils when they are ready to sleep.”
* The pumpkin or gourd (Gr. kolokunthos) was associated with life and health due to its “juicy nature”; see LSJ s.v. This may explain its ritual/therapeutic use both in cleansing an association with death and with treating a patient exhibiting extreme symptoms of dryness.
Dolon the Trojan Wears a Wolf Skin on a Red Figure Vase…His ‘treatment’ was less than therapeutic…
Surrounded by the Halloween spirit because I have small children and I like trashy television, I got interested (again) in continuities between ancient monsters and modern storytelling. Inadvertently, this week has become werewolf week. I started with a reference to turning into wolves in Plato. Then, led by the Oxford Classical Dictionary, I delighted in the werewolf tale from Petronius. This led of course to Pliny the Elder.
But the werewolf hunt does not end there. I have some Pausanias (that shares some aspects with Pliny and Plato) for later in the week. Along the way, I have found a trove of late antique and Byzantine medical treatises on Lycanthropy. (Those are coming tomorrow). I could not wait to force this upon the world: a Byzantine didactic poem based on those medical treatises!
Master Psellos, What can you tell us about wolves about men and anything else you embellish?
The poem is from a collection of didactic verses attributed to Michael Psellos of Constantinople who lived and worked in the 11th century CE. The text comes from the Teubner edition of his poems edited by L. G. Westernik (1982).
Poemata 9.841
“One kind of melancholy is lykanthropy.
And it is clearly a type of misanthropy.
Mark thus a man who rushes from the day
When you see him at night running round graves,
With a pale face, dumb dry eyes, not a care in his rage.”
