“I could end my letter at this place, except that I have put you in a bad place. It is impossible to hail Parthian nobility without a gift and it is not allowed for me to say goodbye to you without thanks. What then? I’ll take something from Epicurus: “getting rich is not an end of troubles for most people, but a change in them.”
I am not surprised by this. The problem isn’t in the money but in the mind. The very thing that makes poverty weigh heavy on us also makes wealth a burden. It doesn’t matter whether you put a sick person on a wooden bed or one of gold: wherever you move them, they take their sickness too!
So, it makes no difference at all whether a sick spirit rests in riches or poverty. The disease follows the person. Goodbye!”
Poteram hoc loco epistulam claudere, nisi te male instituissem. Reges Parthorum2 non potest quisquam salutare sine munere; tibi valedicere non licet gratis. Quid istic? Ab Epicuro mutuum sumam: “Multis parasse divitias non finis miseriarum fuit, sed mutatio.” Nec hoc miror. Non est enim in rebus vitium, sed in ipso animo. Illud, quod paupertatem nobis gravem fecerat, et divitias graves fecit. Quemadmodum nihil refert, utrum aegrum in ligneo lecto an in aureo conloces,—quocumque illum transtuleris, morbum secum suum transferet,—sic nihil refert, utrum aeger animus in divitiis an in paupertate ponatur. Malum illum suum sequitur. Vale.
opper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, with a satirical macaronic poem (‘Vos Creditis, als eine Fabel, / quod scribitur vom Doctor Schnabel’) in octosyllabic rhyming couplets.
“When they need healing, people who have tooth pain or a stubbed toe go to doctors while those who have a fever ask them to come to their homes and help them. But people who fall into melancholy or a frenzy or hallucinations often cannot handle doctors visiting them and either urge them to leave or chase them off because they do not perceive that they are sick thanks to the severity of their sickness.
This is true as well of those who seriously fuck up. The people who cannot be cured are those who behave hatefully and cruelly and turn mean to those who try to correct them or help them. Those who endure and even welcome help do better. It is no small sign of progress when someone who is screwing up listens to those who try to correct them, to explain what the problem is, to reveal weakness and not to take pleasure in hiding mistakes or in them not being known but to admit them and the need to be held and advised by someone else.
That’s why Diogenes says somewhere that for the sake of safety a person should be concerned about finding either a serious friend or a committed enemy, to escape wickedness either through direct critique or kind assistance.”
“Please understand that our own situation is no more endurable than it usually is. It is enough to say this and point to the weakness of our bodies.
When it comes to the overwhelming sickness that dominates us, it is not easier to illustrate it with words or to be persuaded by fact whether or not I have suffered any kind of sickness greater than what you have known yourself.
Ah, it is God’s job to provide us with the ability to endure the hits to our body sent by the Lord to make us better.”
“A friend’s sickness has lately reminded me that we are the best people when we are sick. Does greed or lust ever bother a sick person? They are not controlled by their desires or their love of honors. They don’t care about wealth and think whatever little bit they have is enough, because they will leave it behind! The sick remember the gods and realize they are mortal. They don’t feel envy or awe or contempt for other people. Slander doesn’t attract or encourage the sick and all they dream of are baths and fountains.
These are the end of their concerns, the object of their prayers. And they promise that will be enough if they are lucky to survive. I can now say briefly and clearly what the philosophers try to convey in so many endless words: When we’re healthy we should strive to be the kind of people we promised to be when we were sick. Goodbye!”
Nuper me cuiusdam amici languor admonuit, optimos esse nos dum infirmi sumus. Quem enim infirmum aut avaritia aut libido sollicitat? Non amoribus servit, non adpetit honores, opes neglegit et quantulumcumque, ut relicturus, satis habet. Tunc deos tunc hominem esse se meminit, invidet nemini, neminem miratur neminem despicit, ac ne sermonibus quidem malignis aut attendit aut alitur: balinea imaginatur et fontes.
Haec summa curarum, summa votorum mollemque in posterum et pingue destinat vitam. Possum ergo quod plurimis verbis plurimis etiam voluminibus philosophi docere conantur, ipse breviter tibi mihique praecipere, ut tales esse sani perseveremus, quales nos futuros profitemur infirmi. Vale.
Euricius Cordus (1486-1535); Fur die newe, hievor vnerhorte und erschrocklich todtliche Kranckheyt und schnellen todt, die English schweyee-sucht geant, Strassbourg: 1529.Early books on medicine..Published: 1928..Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
“As winter started coming on, the disease afflicted the Athenians a second time—even though it hadn’t totally disappeared before, there was still a period of relief. Then it lingered no less than a year when the first encounter was two. The overall result was that nothing overwhelmed the Athenians and sapped their power more than this.
No fewer than 4400 hoplites died from the ranks along with three hundred cavalry. And the number of the rest of the masses that died was never discovered.”
The famous plague is described at 2.47-55 and first fell on the Athenians in 430 BCE. Three years later, after a respite, it returned.
The tenth plague: the death of the first-born including Pharaoh’s son. From the Haggadah for Passover (the ‘Sister Haggadah’). 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 14th century. British Library
“Around noon, when the sun’s flame was already hot, we turned off in some village to the home of some old men known well to the thieves. This was easy to understand for even a donkey thanks to the prolonged conversation and shared kisses. They also gave some gifts to them which I had carried on my back and seemed to relate that they were obtained through theft with secret whispers. Once we were unburdened of every bag, they left us to amble and eat in a field next to the home.
But I was not really drawn to a pastoral communion with either the ass or my old horse and I was also not quite used to eating grass. I could see a garden on the other side of the stable, so I broke into it, already wracked by hunger. I filled my stomach immediately with those vegetables, even though they were raw, and I was saying a little prayer to all the gods as I looked around the place, hoping I might find the light of rose bushes in the nearby gardens.
This isolation was providing me confidence I did not have before, if once I was away from the road and hidden by bushes, I could eat the medicine and rise from the curved-hoof of four-footed pack animal to stand straight like a man, while no one was looking.”
Diem ferme circa medium, cum iam flagrantia solis caleretur, in pago quodam apud notos ac familiares latronibus senes devertimus. Sic enim primus aditus et sermo prolixus et oscula mutua quamvis asino sentire praestabant. Nam et rebus eos quibusdam dorso meo depromptis munerabantur, et secretis gannitibus quod essent latrocinio partae videbantur indicare. Iamque nos omni sarcina levatos in pratum proximum passim libero pastui tradidere. Nec me cum asino vel equo meo compascuus coetus attinere potuit, adhuc insolitum alioquin prandere faenum; sed plane pone stabulum prospectum hortulum iam fame perditus fidenter invado, et quamvis crudis holeribus affatim tamen ventrem sagino, deosque comprecatus omnes cuncta prospectabam loca, sicubi forte conterminis in hortulis candens reperirem rosarium. Nam et ipsa solitudo iam mihi bonam fiduciam tribuebat, si devius et frutectis absconditus, sumpto remedio, de iumenti quadripedis incurvo gradu rursum erectus in hominem inspectante nullo resurgerem.
“This work is about that disease which people call “sacred”. It does not seem to me to be more divine or more sacred than any of the rest of the diseases, but it also has a natural cause and people have assumed it is sacred because of their own inexperience and their considerable wonder over how different it seems to them.”
“Those who first claimed that the disease is divinely caused seem to me to be something like the wizards, snake-oil salesmen, faith-healers, and quacks of today, those kinds of men who pretend to great piety and superior knowledge. These kinds of healers shelter themselves and use superstition as a shield against their own helplessness when they have nothing they can do to help. They claim that this affliction is sacred so it won’t be clear that they don’t know anything. They add a ready-made story and throw in a treatment in order to keep their own position strong.”
As Vivian Nutton makes clear in the overview of Mental Illness in the Ancient World (available in Brill’s New Pauly), Hippocrates Breaks from Ancient Near Eastern and Early Greek tradition here in offering physical explanations for mental illness of all kinds instead of divine explanations. Platonic and Aristotelian traditions follow with variations on somatism (the body as the cause), adding in addition to the humors, bile, and disharmony among the organs, habits (excessive consumption, actions) and environments. These approaches were refined by Hellenistic doctors and the work of Rufus and Galen where treatments also came to include psychotherapeutic as well as the physical treatments. The swing towards demonic possession as an explanation during Late Antiquity and the Christian middle ages took mental health approaches back towards the ‘sacred’ explanations of pre-rational antiquity.
Some other posts about mental health from antiquity. Oftentimes translators keep the ancient Greek term melancholy (“black bile”)
Epictetus, Treatises Collected by Arrian, 2.15: To those who cling tenaciously to any judgments they have made
“Whenever some people hear these words—that it is right to be consistent, that the moral person is free by nature and never compelled, while everything else may be hindered, forced, enslaved, subjected to others—they imagine that it is right that they maintain every judgment they have made without compromising at all.
But the first issue is that the judgment should be a good one. For, if I wish to maintain the state of my body, it should be when it is healthy, well-exercised. If you show me that you have the tones of a fevered mind and brag about it, I will say ‘Dude, look for a therapist. This is not health, but sickness.’ “
“When they need healing, people who have tooth pain or a stubbed toe go to doctors while those who have a fever ask them to come to their homes and help them. But people who fall into melancholy or a frenzy or hallucinations often cannot handle doctors visiting them and either urge them to leave or chase them off because they do not perceive that they are sick thanks to the severity of their sickness.
This is true as well of those who seriously fuck up. The people who cannot be cured are those who behave hatefully and cruelly and turn mean to those who try to correct them or help them. Those who endure and even welcome help do better. It is no small sign of progress when someone who is screwing up listens to those who try to correct them, to explain what the problem is, to reveal weakness and not to take pleasure in hiding mistakes or in them not being known but to admit them and the need to be held and advised by someone else.
That’s why Diogenes says somewhere that for the sake of safety a person should be concerned about finding either a serious friend or a committed enemy, to escape wickedness either through direct critique or kind assistance.”
“Please understand that our own situation is no more endurable than it usually is. It is enough to say this and point to the weakness of our bodies. When it comes to the overwhelming sickness that dominates us, it is not easier to illustrate it with words or to be persuaded by fact whether or not I have suffered any kind of sickness greater than what you have known yourself. Ah, it is God’s job to provide us with the ability to endure the hits to our body sent by the Lord to make us better.”
“As winter started coming on, the disease afflicted the Athenians a second time—even though it hadn’t totally disappeared before, there was still a period of relief. Then it lingered no less than a year when the first encounter was two. The overall result was that nothing overwhelmed the Athenians and sapped their power more than this.
No fewer than 4400 hoplites died from the ranks along with three hundred cavalry. And the number of the rest of the masses that died was never discovered.”
The famous plague is described at 2.47-55 and first fell on the Athenians in 430 BCE. Three years later, after a respite, it returned.
The tenth plague: the death of the first-born including Pharaoh’s son. From the Haggadah for Passover (the ‘Sister Haggadah’). 2nd or 3rd quarter of the 14th century. British Library
![opper engraving of Doctor Schnabel [i.e Dr. Beak], a plague doctor in seventeenth-century Rome, with a satirical macaronic poem (‘Vos Creditis, als eine Fabel, / quod scribitur vom Doctor Schnabel’) in octosyllabic rhyming couplets.](https://i0.wp.com/sententiaeantiquae.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Paul_Furst_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_coloured_version.png?ssl=1)
