The Pseudo-Hippocratic Letters and the Greek self-image of virtue, health, and expertise
p. 197-216
Résumé
I examine the two major collections in the corpus of letters attributed to Hippocrates. In the first (‘A’), Artaxerxes seeks Hippocrates’ help in dealing with an epidemic of plague, and receives a proudly dusty answer. The second (‘D’) deals with Hippocrates’ visit to Abdera in response to an appeal from its citizens to treat Democritus’s apparent madness. I consider their presentation of the figure of Hippocrates as an exemplar of ‘Greek’ ethical and moral perspectives on the virtuous life; its compatibility (or otherwise) with withdrawal from the ordinary concerns, and habits of engagement, of society; the role of the expert healer and guide; and the appropriate attitude towards wealth, remuneration, and the role of patriotic (and pan-Hellenic) obligations. I relate their contents to some other outlying elements in the corpus (in particular the Decree, the Embassy, and the Speech at the Altar as well as to other roughly contemporary (late Hellenistic, early Imperial) developments in popular philosophical moralizing and exhortation.
Entrées d’index
Keywords : Hippocrates, Democritus, madness, laughter, melancholy
Texte intégral
1The two major collections of letters attributed to Hippocrates,1 retail, albeit at different length and in quite distinct literary and rhetorical styles, two invitations extended to Hippocrates to come and put his formidable medical skills to work in the service of two – pointedly very different – foreign supplicants. In language recalling the plague of Iliad 1,2 Artaxerxes (in A) asks one Paitos, supposedly a physician of Persian fealty,3 for help in dealing with an epidemic:
Send me something at once, either natural remedies from your own understanding, or procedures of expertise (technê), or an account from someone else who can cure it. (T1: 1, 48.3-6 Smith 1990 [henceforth ‘S’]; trans. Smith, with alterations)
2Paitos replies that natural remedies (phusika boêthêmata) are of no use in case of such a plague (2, 48,14-15 S): in epidemics technical expertise is needed to determine “the bodies’ deviation (sc. from the normal). Hippocrates the doctor will cure this affliction” (2, 48.15-16 S). He then provides a glowing encomium of the great man, stressing his divine medical genealogy (2. 48.17-29 S).4 Paitos lauds his great technical advances in the field:
Applying his divine nature, he was able to teach himself the entire science (technê), surpassing his forebears as much by the excellence of his soul as he outstripped them in the virtue of his technê. (T2: 2, 48,29-50,2 S)
3The contrast between phusis and technê is pointed: mere folk-medicine won’t do. In letter 3, Artaxerxes instructs Hystanes, the governor of the Hellespont, to offer Hippocrates, “the renown of whose technê has reached even to me, as much gold as he wants, and anything else that he lacks in abundance, and send him to me” (50,14-16 S). And while he’s about it, “if there is any other good man in Europe, spare no expense to make him a friend (philos) to the King’s house” (50,17-18 S).
4Hystanes relays this information to Hippocrates.5 Hippocrates indignantly replies:
Tell the King I have sufficient food, clothing, and shelter, and all the necessities that I require for life, and that I have no wish for Persian wealth or to save foreigners from disease, since they are enemies of the Greeks. (T3: 5, 52,2-5 S)
5He then sends a note to one Demetrius:6 “the King of the Persians has sent for me, unaware that, for me, wisdom’s argument far outweighs that of gold” (6, 52,15-16 S). Hystanes reports back to the Great King (letter 7), whereupon an incensed Artaxerxes threatens the Coans with fire and fury: unless they surrender Hippocrates, “I will drag your island down into the sea” (8, 54,10-11 S). The Coans respond in elegant Doric that they have voted to do no such thing, and will defy the King’s demands, just as they did in the case of Darius and Xerxes before him, preferring as good democrats to die the nastiest of Persian deaths rather than accede to his demands (9, 54,13-23 S). And there matters end. The opposition between Artaxerxes’ tyrannical assumption that everything is obtainable by bribery or threats and the proud Greek assertion of freedom and self-sufficiency could hardly be more starkly presented. Hippocrates, motivated by philanthrôpia, will gladly share the fruits of his expertise with all who need it; but he will not betray the community of Greeks for gold.
6The connections between A and D, the much longer epistolary novella relating Hippocrates’ encounter with the allegedly mad Democritus (letters 10-17), as well as the addenda to it (18-21) are complex and controversial.7 But their thematic links are worth exploring a little further.
7In letter 10, the 1st of D,8 the citizens of Abdera make an impassioned appeal to Hippocrates to come and treat their great citizen Democritus. He is stricken, they think, with a type of madness:
He used to be oblivious of everything, even himself; but now he stays awake day and night, finding in great and small matters alike occasions for hilarity, estimating life itself as utterly worthless. Somebody gets married, another does some business, this one speaks in front of the people, that one takes up a command, or goes off on an embassy, or gets himself elected, or becomes impoverished, or falls ill, or is wounded, or dies even: he laughs at all of them. (T4: 10.1, 56,4-7 S).
8The Abderites take this bizarre behaviour to be obviously pathological. Democritus was always a bit odd, in an absent-minded professorish sort of way, but now all of life’s ordinary successes and milestones, as well as its trials and tribulations, seem fit objects for unbridled hilarity. This goes well beyond the norms of even academic eccentricity.
9His academic pursuits themselves are equally unaccountable:
He makes Hades the object of his researches, which he commits to writing.9 He says the air is full of eidôla, listens to the voice of birds, and wakes up in the middle of the night singing softly to himself.10 Sometimes he claims to be travelling through the infinite, and that there are innumerable Democrituses just like himself. (T5: 10.1, 56,7-13 S).
10Abderites were legendarily dense;11 and letter 10 plays on this unflattering stereotype. They see folly and superstition in what are, in fact, perfectly legitimate enterprises. Democritus is in fact investigating the causes of madness, and seeking a cure for it (17.3, 76,28-78,10 S). His eidôla are not ghosts (a common sense of the term), but rather the atomic films that constantly stream off objects to produce visual perception, according to standard atomist theory.12 The ‘innumerable Democrituses’ are the infinitely many exact replicas of Democritus in atomic construction that will inevitably occur in the infinity of time in an infinitely-extended universe, each sharing a type-identical physical morphology, and consequently, since the theory is thoroughly materialistic, identical mental contents and dispositions as well. The literal-minded Abderites misconstrue Democritus’ talk of intellectually traversing the universe for the nonsensical claim actually to have done so.13
11The Abderites represent the anti-intellectual Everyman, and are quite mistaken about Democritus’s condition (17.10, 90,25-92,12 S). Yet they are not unsympathetic. Their concern for the well-being of their illustrious, if misunderstood, compatriot is sincere (cf. T15). They refer, engagingly, to their own relative lack of wisdom (10.2, 58,7-9 S). They are in a bind, and like Artaxerxes seek the best possible professional assistance in getting out of it. They offer financial incentives; but unlike the Persian plutocrat, they recognize that Hippocrates will be motivated less by money and the prospect of fame than by the desire for learning (paideia) and to be of benefit to humanity (10.2. 56,15-19 S). Thus their appeal mirrors Hippocrates’ reasons for rejecting the approach of the Persians (6, 6a, 52,15-20 S); and they play judiciously on his pan-Hellenic sympathies:
Come, best of men, to cure the most eminent man, not as a doctor but as a stalwart of Ionia, protecting us with a holy defensive wall. You will heal a city, not a man…. Come as a legislator, as a judge, as a ruler, as a saviour, and as the architect (technitês) of these things…. It is not just a single, undistinguished city, but rather all of Greece which is begging you to protect the very embodiment of wisdom. It is as if paideia herself sends this embassy to you, begging for a release from this madness. (T6: 10.2, 56,21-9 S)
12They emphasize Hippocrates’ descent from Heracles, the uncle of their founder Abderos, playing on his sympathies and kinship (cf. Paitos’ encomium: 2. 48.17-29 S, T2 above). They appeal to him as a Greek, and a friend of wisdom and justice (cf. Embassy, 5, 114,36-116,21 S). They may lack paideia, and have no idea what Democritus is about; but they revere him, respect Hippocrates, and understand the motivations of decency, philanthropy, and human sympathy, as Artaxerxes manifestly does not.
13The 2nd Letter too picks up themes adumbrated in A.14 Hippocrates praises the Abderites for realizing that good men, and not walls and towers, secure safety (11, 58, 22-4 S; cf. T6). But then:
Technai are gifts from the gods, men are products of nature…. Nature herself calls me to save one of her own, who is in danger of collapsing through disease. In treating the ailing Democritus I obey not you, but nature and the gods. (T7: 11, 58,24-9 S)
14Appeals to kinship and nationalism will not sway him (as they dissuaded Hippocrates in A: T9), while money is wholly irrelevant:
Neither god nor nature would offer me money for coming; so do not force it on me, but leave the works of a free science (eleutherê technê) free. Those who hire their knowledge out for money make it slavish, shackling its previous freedom of expression (parrhêsiê). (T8: 11, 60,1-5 S)
15Fee-for-service medicine is a terrible thing: harlot-doctors lie about the severity of an illness, fail to come when they have promised to, but yet turn up all the time unbidden if they scent an opportunity for making money (60,5-7 S). The language of slavery and freedom recalls the crucial Greek distinction between their own free institutions and barbarian despotism:
Had I wanted to enrich myself at any cost..., I would visit not you, not even for ten talents,… but the Great King of the Persians. Entire cities groaning with the wealth that comes from human good fortune would have been given to me in order to cure the plague there. But I refused to free a land hostile to Greece from this dreadful disease…. Wealth is not a matter of acquiring money at all costs…. Is it not equally bad to save both enemies and friends for money? … I take no profit from disease. (T9: 11, 60,13-24 S)
16This passage provides the closest narrative link between A and D. Hippocrates displays a philosophical disdain for worldly goods which Democritus exemplifies. A free man’s art should be practised freely, not for monetary reward:15
Human life is a pitiful thing. The intolerable love of money (philarguriê) has penetrated all of it, like some winter wind. If only all doctors could unite to cure a disease which is more dangerous than madness, since it is honoured, even though it is ruinous…. All diseases of the soul are virulent forms of madness, imprinting (empoiousas) opinions and figments (phantasmata) in the mind: only someone who is purged by means of virtue is cured of it. (T10: 11, 60,7-13 S)
17The language of imprinting, and the classification of character-defects (‘diseases of the soul’) as sorts of madness, have a distinctly Stoic flavour, although the general attitude derives from post-Socratic philosophy in general, and Cynicism in particular.16 But it is a mistake to concentrate on the debts to, or the echoes of, any particular school. This is, among other things, a standard text of folk-philosophical ethics. It owes something to Plato and Aristotle, and perhaps also to Epicurus. But most obviously it reflects the devolution of serious Greek academic philosophy into the Roman world’s inspirational self-help literature.
18Plato and Aristotle had both emphasized the distorting and dehumanizing effects of an excessive concern for money. Aristotle thought it represented a metaphysical error: money is properly simply a means of exchange, and hence has only instrumental value – but the greedy mistakenly think of the pursuit of it as an end in itself, as though it had intrinsic worth. Such a pursuit will be insatiable, there being no natural limit to it (Politics 1.9, 1256b40-1258a14). Diogenes the Cynic, anticipating Paul, called it “the mother-city of all evils” (DL 6.50). For the Epicureans, it may not be the root of all evil (that would be the fear of death: ad Men 124-7, = 24 A LS; Lucretius 3.830-911, = 24 E LS), but it’s certainly responsible for a great deal of it (Lucretius, 3.59-73; 5.1423-35). The Stoics make similar noises: “Chrysippus says that greed is the false belief that money is a good” (DL 7.111); it is a disease, comparable to those of drunkenness and womanizing (Stobaeus 2.71). Galen too proffers pious platitudes about the importance of being satisfied with the bare necessities (Freedom from Distress 38-48,78-9, = 13,3-16,2, 23,13-24,14 BJP; Affections of the Soul 8-9, 28,25-35,4 De Boer 1937) , and the avoidance of greed (Freedom 79-82, = 24,14-25,15 BJP; Affections 10, 35,7-22 De Boer 1937).17 The condemnation of greed, as both a moral failing and a source of unhappiness, is, by this time, a banal commonplace.
19In the 7th letter, Hippocrates writes to one Crateuas the herbalist,18 asking for a supply of materia medica that he hopes will not be needed (it isn’t). He also notes that true wealth and fortune grows from the earth itself:
Without it, philarguriê would have had nowhere to stand, nor would the Abderites be trying to lure me with ten talents, supposing me to be a mercenary rather than a doctor. If… you could cut down the bitter root of philarguriê completely, leaving nothing behind, we could surely cure men’s sick minds as well as their bodies. But that is just a prayer. (T11: 16.70,16-20 S)
20The same preoccupation re-appears in Democritus’s diatribe against the folly of all mankind, in the climactic 8th Letter (17.5, 80,15-82,6 S; 17.7-9, 84,8-90,24 S). Indeed, it is the real cause of his laughter:
I laugh at the mindless, who suffer the penalty for their wickedness, philarguriê, insatiability, hostility, treachery, scheming and malignity. Their ingenuity in contriving evils – there is an infinity of them as well – is painful to relate. (T12: 17.7, 84,28-30 S)
21The rest of the 7th Letter talks about the efficacy of certain plants, the importance of seizing the opportune moment, the kairos, in medicine, and the difficulty of adjusting treatments to the idiosyncrasies of the patient, the disease, and other contingencies (16, 72,1-15 S). The technê is long, and the kairos fleeting; and experience is unreliable too. Patients can be difficult; human abilities are limited, and we are neither omniscient, nor capable of perfect precision. This is, of course, Hippocratic boilerplate.19 But it emphasizes both the role of expert knowledge, and also its inherent limitations. Paitos insisted that natural remedies would not be enough; the plague needed to be combatted by someone with genuine professional expertise (2, 48,14-50,2, T1-2). But that expertise, though real enough, is far from infallible:
We go into battle with two things in mind: the human being and the technê: one is obscure, the other limited by our knowledge. We need good fortune for both of them. (T13: 16, 72,9-11 S)
22Drugs, and the knowledge of their use, are important; but “may wisdom, in the end, be the most effective and the most medicinal of drugs for him” (16, 72,22-4 S).
23On several occasions (T7; cf. 11, 60,25-6 S), Hippocrates implies that Democritus may not be really mad at all. The 3rd letter notes that while the desire for solitude is indeed symptomatic of melancholics (62,3-10),20 it may also betoken:
An overwhelming strength of soul; it is not only madmen who seek out caves and quietness, but those who despise human affairs in their desire for freedom from disturbance (ataraxiê).21 (T14: 12, 62,16-18 S)
24Democritus may only be exhibiting an extreme form of wisdom, which, whatever ordinary people might think, cannot be a sickness or a vice (13, 64,4-14S). In the 6th letter, Hippocrates recalls dreaming of Asclepius and the personifications of Truth and Opinion (15, 68,1-70,4 S). Asclepius keeps his distance, so Democritus needs no doctor: the truth is that he is healthy, while the opinion that he is sick is an Abderite mistake.22 Elsewhere, he is less unequivocal:
I want to cure a city which is sick because of the sickness of one man, Democritus – you will, I am sure, have heard of this man’s fame. His city says that he is destroyed by madness, but I wish – indeed I pray – that they only believe that he is demented, and that it is not really so. (T15: 14, 66,8-11 S)
25The same is true in the Crateuas letter: “I hope we won’t use the drugs… and I don’t think we will; but we must be ready for everything” (16, 70,10-13; cf. 72,4-5 S). Still, everything turns out as he had hoped and suspected: “Democritus is not insane, Damagetus, but rather surpassingly wise in every way; he instructed me in virtue, and through me all of mankind (17.1, 72,26-8 S)”.
26Even so, Hippocrates takes some convincing, and his attitude throughout is strikingly labile. This is partly, no doubt, contrived for dramatic reasons, and to emphasize the difficulty of making properly professional, clinical judgements, even for the genuine expert – ars longa, after all. But Hippocrates also represents a certain conception of the virtuous man, one thoroughly engaged in ordinary human life and its pursuits. Democritus exemplifies an utterly different and more alien model of virtue, one which might easily present like madness. This is one of the crucial antitheses that the work is designed to emphasize. Hippocrates’ busy, engagé life is exemplified by the range of the different addressees of his letters, which underwrites his involvement with and competence in everyday practical matters, such as the procurement of equipment, transport, and lodging, and his concern with keeping his domestic affairs in order during his absence. Democritus, by contrast, is single-minded, and disturbingly disconnected and alienated from mundane affairs.
27Hippocrates, indeed is shocked by his bizarre and apparently inhumane behaviour. The scene-setting at the beginning of the climactic 8th letter is artful, if not particularly subtle. Democritus is living a solitary life, albeit just outside the city walls (17.2, 74,11-15 S). He is unkempt and shabbily dressed, pale and emaciated, sitting on a plain stone seat, in the shade by a stream (74,15-21 S). He is surrounded by books and animal parts, which he examines between bursts of thinking and writing (74,21-7). He is a caricature of the absent-minded academic, rather than the lunatic, though as we know the two are notoriously hard to differentiate.23 Hippocrates cautions the Abderites to keep their distance:
When I have more closely approached, and both seen and heard the man’s discourse and physical state, I will know the truth about his affection. (T16: 17.2, 76,3-4 S)
28He approaches, and greets Democritus as “wisest of men” (17.3, 76,5-10 S). When he discovers to whom he is talking, Democritus is equally effusive:
Your great renown, and that of your wisdom in medicine has travelled far, even as far as us. … But before anything else, sit down. You see how pleasant this seat of leaves is, green and soft to sit upon, so much more comfortable than the thrones of those who are envied for their good fortune (T17: 76,14-17 S)
29The two great men meet, in a locus amoenus, in an atmosphere of mutual respect, as equals, on the same plane: indeed actually under one:
Democritus himself was sitting alone under a spreading, low plane-tree,24 in a coarse shirt, un-anointed with oil, on a stone seat, pale and emaciated, with an untrimmed beard.25 (T18: 17.2, 74,15-16)
30Both men are famous beyond the borders of their countries for their wisdom, and each is aware of the other’s fame. But then Democritus asks Hippocrates whether he has come on private or public business (76,18-19; the word for ‘public’ is, significantly, ‘epidêmios’); Hippocrates answers that while his pretext is public, the Abderites’ request, his real motive is private, to meet the great man (76,20-1). Democritus responds by inviting him to share his (somewhat limited) hospitality (76,21-2).
31So far, the bromance is going swimmingly. But tensions soon begin to surface. Hippocrates asks him what he is writing about. “Madness”, replies Democritus (76,27-8):
What it is, how it afflicts people, and how to cure it. This is why I am dissecting all these animals …, searching for bile, its nature and location. Excess of it is generally, as you know, the cause of human derangement; it exists in everyone naturally, but in some less so, and in others more. (T19 17.3, 78,2-8 S)
32Hippocrates replies that he envies Democritus his leisure to engage in such activities. Democritus asks him, somewhat disingenuously, why does he not have it. Because of the demands of “travel, children, debt, sickness, servants, marriage” (78,9-14). He is a busy man, with a full range of civic, social and familial duties to fulfil.
33Democritus, disconcertingly, responds by falling about laughing; Hippocrates, unsurprisingly, takes offence. He upbraids Democritus for making no apparent distinction between good things and bad, between things calling for pity and compassion, “death, sickness, delusion, madness, melancholy, murder, or something even worse”, and those which demand not ridicule, but empathetic pleasure: “marriages, feasts, births, initiations, offices, honours, and anything else wholly good” (17.4, 78,15-31).26
34Democritus, though, is laughing at one thing only:
Humanity – groaning with ignorance, void of right action, childish in all its pursuits, suffering pointless woes to no purpose, travelling to the limits of the earth and its very depths with unlimited desires, melting gold and silver, constantly covetous, always clamouring after more, and by so doing making themselves less. (T20: 17.5, 80,15-16 S)
35Greed again is to blame:
They want to master everything, but cannot master themselves. They rush into marriage, then get rid of their wives. They love, then they hate. They produce children out of desire, then throw them out when they are grown. What is this vain and irrational urge, which differs not at all from madness? … They dig up the earth looking for silver, then if they find silver, they want to buy more earth. Having bought earth, they sell its fruits, then by disposing of the fruits they gain silver once again…. I laugh in scorn at their failures, and redouble my laughter at their misfortunes. They have overstepped the decrees of truth, trying to outdo one another in hatred. They fight siblings, parents, fellow-citizens, for the sort of possessions which no-one owns in death. … They lust after things which are hard to get. … overcome every day by lust, by greed, by all of the passions they are ill with. Each of them is a Thersites27 of life. (T21: 17.5, 82,1-22 S)
36All human life is vitiated by insane, destructive competition; civil society is a contradiction in terms. So, in his impassioned diatribe, Democritus justifies his rejection, and ridicule, of social and familial norms.
37The desire for solitude and retreat need not indicate insanity (T14). When nous wishes to escape from tumult, it quietens the body and takes it away to “the place of truth, where there is neither father, wife, children, mother, siblings, relatives, servants, nor chance” (12, 62,18-23 ). Even so, Hippocrates balks at Democritus’s degree of detachment; he is an industrious man, and much sought-after; as such he finds it hard to balance the demands of the public and the private (cf. 76,18-19). Democritus has admirably described human misery and its causes; but
Our activities decree how much of it is necessary, whether running a household or shipbuilding, or public activity in general. Human beings must involve themselves in it; Nature did not create them for idleness…. Who, Democritus, on getting married, anticipates separation and death? Who in raising children foresaw their loss? The same is true in farming, sailing, ruling, leadership, in any of the things that belong to living. No-one anticipates failure; everyone is sustained by optimism in such things. (T22: 17.6, 82,29-84,6 S)
38Human life demands engagement, investment in practical activities, which necessarily bring disappointment in their train. The solution is not to withdraw into eremitic quietism and mockery of ordinary human concerns, their frustrations and discontents, but to cultivate a properly philosophical attitude towards them, which involves accepting them, with a certain sense of detachment and reservation, to be sure, but not rejecting them altogether.
39This is the central, general tension of the whole text, pitting Hippocrates’ civic Hellenism against Democritus’s mixture of Cynic detachment and Stoic cosmopolitanism. Both claim to be motivated by philanthropy. Democritus seeks a cure for humanity’s endemic madness (T18 above), and laughter is a part of that cure:
When you know the reason for my laughter, you will take on a better cargo in exchange for the one you brought on your embassy,28 and take my laughter home with you, as a treatment for yourself and your country, and the ability to make others virtuous. You may teach me medicine in return. (T23: 17.4, 80,2-4 S; cf. 17.9, 88,5-8 S)
40Still, Hippocrates finds it hard to see Democritus’s savage ridicule and apparent unconcern with the demands of appropriate social behaviour as genuinely philanthropic, indeed even as properly human.
41It is worth looking back at the 4th Letter, where Hippocrates asks Dionysius to look after his affairs while he is away, and not least to keep an eye on his wife:
Come … and live in my house … My wife will be staying with her parents while I’m away, but supervise her affairs so that she conducts herself in an appropriate manner, and doesn’t think her husband’s absence equals other men. She has always been decorous, and has very upright parents…. But a woman, being intrinsically licentious, always needs someone to keep her decent; unless constantly pruned back she will go wild, like undergrowth. Friends are better than parents at controlling wives, since they are not deflected by the desire to get along with them, which often gets in the way of discipline. (T24: 13, 64,18-28 S)
42This may strike us as being ironic, humorous even; but to the Greek reader of the time its casual misogyny was probably quite unremarkable. Whatever its intended tone, Hippocrates is portrayed as a conventional family man with conventional concerns. Of course, he is also a paragon, both of professional skill and moral and political (and patriotic) probity. But these two are, he thinks, perfectly compatible. We have, then, a conflict between two models of the good life: the life of detached intellectualism versus that of social and political engagement.
43This conflict had a long history. Plato exalts the life of the mind over that of the body; indeed the fact of being embodied is a temporary inconvenience to the genuine philosopher, all of whose life is a preparation for (physical) death (Phaedo 64a-67e). In the Republic, the ideal social arrangement frees the intellectually-superior Guardian class from any of the ordinary commerce of life, apart from the necessarily-imposed obligation to rule (7, 519c-521b) and to produce children. Aristotle too distinguished the intellectual from the social and political life (NE 1.5, 1095b22-1096a5), although less radically so. Both were good human lives, and while pure intellectual theôria is preferable to the mere exercise of the social virtues (NE 10.7, 1177a11-1178a8), “life in accordance with the other excellences is also happy” (NE 10.8, 1177b9-10). No good life can be solitary (NE 1.7, 1097b7-11; cf. 1.8, 1099b3-4); the virtuous man needs (appropriately virtuous, and intellectually compatible) friends (NE 8.3, 1056b7-32), which are “the greatest of goods” (NE 9.9, 1069b3-10; the Stoics agree: DL 7.124, = 67 P LS). The virtuous person will be self-sufficient (autarchês), but this is not the self-sufficiency of the survivalist. The good life requires a modicum of external goods, ta ektos agatha (NE 1.8, 1099a31-b9; cf. 1.10, 1101a14-21).
44Both Cynics and Stoics take the ideal of self-sufficiency further, albeit in different directions. Cynic philosophers from Antisthenes onward cultivated a contemptuous indifference to society and its norms, and a hardy disregard for creature comforts, which often went beyond the merely antisocial. Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Cynics largely consist of anecdotes designed to bear this out. Diogenes’ contempt for ordinary mores, as well a certain cultivated rudeness (DL 6.24: “He was very good at pouring scorn on others”), fits well enough with the figure of Democritus in his self-imposed exile, even if Diogenes of the legends seems not so much to avoid society as to go out of his way to outrage it.29 The same goes for Crates’ and Hipparchia’s public sex (DL 6.97; Sextus, PH 1.153, 3.200). Indifference to the high and mighty is certainly relevant; but this, as we saw, characterizes Hippocrates and his attitude to Persian despotism, rather than Democritus’s more radical rejection of society. On the other hand, our Democritus is not simply a social exile. He interacts with – and scandalizes – the Abderites by seeking to mock them into sanity, rather as Diogenes sought to shock the Athenians into virtue.
45The Stoics also happily flouted social norms. Zeno, supposedly Crates’s student, advocated the community of wives (DL 7.33, = 67 B LS; and 7.131, Chrysippus), and considered incest to be of no account (PH 3.205).30 His Republic was particularly scandalous: “all who are not virtuous are foes, enemies, slaves, and alien to one another, including parents and children, brothers and brothers, relations and relations… only virtuous people are citizens, friends, relations, and free” (DL 7.33, = 67 B LS). This last encapsulates a number of the lines of opposition we have been considering. Freedom and slavery are not matters of physical liberty or bondage, but of virtue and vice. Moreover, they are, properly understood, entirely intellectual, and under our control (cf. DL 7.121, = 67 M LS). All of this is at odds not only with Aristotle, but also with the ordinary life of civic, social and familial virtue espoused by Hippocrates. For the ordinary Greek, ties of kinship trumped all other social obligations; they were followed, in order, by those to one’s neighbourhood and city, and perhaps also to those of one’s larger linguistic group. For the Stoics, the only true community is that of the wise and good; but even so, social, familial, and political life still had its place (Epictetus 2.10.1-12, = 59Q LS; cf. Cicero, On duties 1.107-17, = 66E LS).
46Diogenes the Cynic, when asked where he came from, replied that he was a citizen of the world, kosmopolitês (DL 6.63), an idea also closely associated with Stoicism (cf. Epictetus 1.10.1-3, = 59 Q LS):
Zeno’s much-admired Republic is focused on this one main point, that we should not live in cities, each making its own particular laws, but we should consider all men our fellow citizens and neighbours, since there is only one world and way of life, like that of a herd grazing together, nurtured by a common law. (T25: Plutarch, The Fortune of Alexander 329a = 67 A LS; cf. 67 K, L LS)
47Hippocrates will not go so far. He wants to help mankind, but not to the extent of offering aid and comfort to the enemies of the Greeks. Democritus, however, goes even further, beyond the boundaries of this world, in his search for a cure for human evil:
I said… “Perhaps without us knowing it the whole world is ill, and there is nowhere for it to send an embassy for therapy. For what could there be outside it?” He replied, “There are many infinities of worlds, Hippocrates, and do not, my friend, underestimate the riches of nature”. I said “You will teach me that at the appropriate time (idios kairos).31 I fear you may begin to laugh even while traversing the infinite”. (T26: 17.4, 80,7-13 S)
48The ending of the collection is abrupt, and in many ways unsatisfactory (Hippocrates suddenly has an epiphany of Democritus as demi-god, and goes back to tell the Abderites they’ve nothing to worry about: 17.10, 90,25-92,12 S). But abstracting from that, we can now take stock of the motives that drive both of the collections.
49They, and the other texts in their broader ambit, can be seen as revolving around a large and fluid set of contrarieties: freedom and slavery, citizenship and individuality, public and private, engagement and detachment, convention and iconoclasm, wealth and poverty, excess and sufficiency, greed and restraint, the moral and the intellectual, the practical and the theoretical. Indeed more generally: wisdom and foolishness, virtue and vice, sickness and health; technical and natural, the familiar and the alien. The precise meanings of the opposed notions are themselves controversial, as are the relations between them. This is particularly apparent in D, no doubt partly due to the author’s very Greek desire to pile on the antitheses to the point of incoherence. But for all that, what we have is a dramatic presentation of a set of opposing views regarding the nature of these things, their hold upon us, and our proper attitude towards them – indeed of the nature of the properly human life.
50Hippocrates is presented as having a proper philanthropic concern with humanity and a desire to rid it as far as he possibly can of its ills. But equally, he is a Greek, and motivated by Greek fellow-feeling. This is more starkly brought into relief by his opposition to Persian tyranny in A, but is evident in D too. Democritus too is motivated by philanthrôpia, but he sequesters himself from, and makes a mockery of, ordinary human concerns; his interests are theoretical, albeit with the hope of finding a practical solution to a practical human problem. Moreover, his explicit concern with humanity as a whole contrasts with Hippocrates’ phil-Hellenism. These two different Greek conceptions of the good life themselves contrast with the wickedness and arrogance represented by the tyranny of Artaxerxes.
51The Greek confrontation with Persia looms large in the background of the development of the Greek self-image of freedom, as is evident in Herodotus’ treatment of the Persian Wars. The entire Histories may be read as an extended attempt to account for the extraordinary fact that a small group of perpetually squabbling cities managed to unite to defeat the overwhelming military might of the largest empire in the world. Part of that explanation is put down to the hardy asceticism, self-sufficiency, and self-interested motivations of the Greeks, by contrast with the luxury, feebleness, and servility of the Persians; and this is strikingly mirrored in the ethnography and environmental determinism of the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places.32
52The epistolary collections, then, and their associated texts present a complex account of the nature and background to the persisting Greek self-image in the period of Roman political ascendancy. Greek culture came to dominate Rome: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit. But it was not, for all that, a complete conquest. The sort of pan-Hellenic solidarity exemplified by Hippocrates could be, and indeed was, sometimes seen not just as a kind of arrogant cultural superiority, but also as a political threat, amounting to the existence of a potentially disloyal fifth column. Cato the Elder feared the Greeks bearing cultural gifts:
He not only hated Greek philosophers;33 he was also suspicious of the Greek doctors working in Rome. He had heard, apparently of Hippocrates’ famous response to the king of Persia’s invitation to him with the promise of many talents, that he would never serve barbarians who were the enemies of Greece. He said that all Greek doctors had sworn this oath, and enjoined his son not to trust any of them. (T27: Plutarch, Life of Cato 23.3-4, 350c).
53The practice of a free art might not be so disinterested after all.34
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
Format
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- Chicago
- MLA
Primary sources
BJP = V. Boudon-Millot, J. Jouanna, A. Pietrobelli, Galien, Ne pas se chagriner, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2010.
De Boer 1937 = W. De Boer, Galeni de Animi Affectuum et Peccatorum Dignotione et Curatione; de Atra Bile, CMG V 4,1,1, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1937.
DK = H. Diels, W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorokratiker, Berlin, Weidmann, 19526.
LS = A.A. Long, D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic philosophers, two vols., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Smith 1990 (S) = W.D. Smith, Hippocrates: Pseudepigraphic writings, Leiden, Brill, 1990.
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Attridge 1976 = H.W. Attridge, First century Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus, Missoula MT, 1976.
Cantor 2018 = D. Cantor, Western medicine since the Renaissance, in Pormann 2018, p. 362-383.
10.1017/9781107705784 :Desclos 2000 = M.-L. Desclos (ed.), Le rire chez lez grecs : anthropologie du rire en Grèce ancienne. Grenoble, 2000.
Halliwell 2008 = S. Halliwell, Greek laughter: A study of cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity, Cambridge, 2008.
10.1017/CBO9780511483004 :Hankinson 2000 = R.J. Hankinson, La pathologie du rire : réflexions sur le rôle du rire chez les médecins grecs, in Desclos 2000, p. 191-200.
Hankinson 2008 = R.J. Hankinson, The man and his work, in R.J. Hankinson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galen, Cambridge, 2008, p. 1-33.
10.1017/CCOL9780521819541 :Hankinson 2019 = R.J. Hankinson, The laughing philosopher and the physician: laughter, diagnosis and therapy in Greek medicine, in P. Destrée and F. Trivigno (eds.) Laughter, Humour, and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford, 2019, p. 52-79.
10.1093/oso/9780190460549.003.0004 :Jouanna 1999 = J. Jouanna, Hippocrates, Baltimore, 1999.
Pormann 2018 = P.E. Pormann, The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates, Cambridge, 2018.
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10.1136/bmj.1.4924.1262 :Stewart 1958 = Z. Stewart, Democritus and the Cynics, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 63, 1958, p. 179-191.
10.2307/310854 :Temkin 1985 = O. Temkin, Hippocrates as the physician of Democritus, in Gesnerus, 42, 1985, p. 455-464.
10.1163/22977953-0420304021 :Notes de bas de page
1 Falsely of course; Smith 1990, P. 1-2; they are part of the emerging ‘biographical’ tradition that sought to give substance to the shadowy figure of the historical Hippocrates; see Jouanna 1999, P. 20-4, 397. Jouanna believes that A reflects a real invitation from the King to the historical Hippocrates : this might be true, but seems to me unlikely. Henceforth I label the Artaxerxes collection as ‘A’, that involving Democritus as ‘D’.
2 “We are in the grip of a hostile beast that is destroying our flocks; it has stricken many, and made them unhealable; it hurls down dart after bitter dart”: 1, 48,8-10 S. The connection with the Iliad may be more subtle; Artaxerxes is portrayed in a bad light, but at least he is concerned, as any decent autocrat should be, and as Agamemnon was, with the well-being of his flock (I am grateful to Lesley Dean-Jones for pointing this out).
3 Smith (1990, P. 19-20 n. 51) is rightly sceptical on the views of Diels, et al. as to his identity. Compare the case of Crateuas: n. 18 below.
4 Hippocrates is also given a divine medical genealogy in the Speech at the Altar (26, 108,14-20 S), and the Embassy (27.2-6, 110,21-116,35 S); the Abderites stress it too: 10.2, 56,32-58,11 S.
5 Letters 4-6 survive in slightly different versions in the MSS. and the papyri: see Smith 1990, P. 52, 53 nn. 1-3.
6 Or a Gorgias, according to 6a; Hippocrates’ association with the sophist is also a part of the biographical tradition: Jouanna 1999, P. 18 n. 52.
7 Letters 18-21 also concern Hippocrates-Democritus relations, and also deal with Democritus and his ‘madness’; but they cannot be integrated with D, and are almost certainly by another hand, or hands. Letters 22-4 are a mixed bag, only loosely related to the rest. See Smith 1990, P. 18-34.
8 Cardinals represent the ordering of the letters in the collection as a whole, ordinals those of D.
9 Democritus wrote On Those in Hades, and On Hades: 68 B 0c, 1 DK; DL 9.46.
10 Singing may be a symptom of psychological disturbance: Epidemics 1.27. 2.
11 See Cicero, Att. 4.16, 7.7; we do not know when it became proverbial (Smith 1990, P. 29). See also 14, 66,26-8 S: “Do you think these things are not evils? In that case, Democritus, you are a melancholic, at risk of becoming yourself the real Abderite, while your city is actually wiser than you are”. Cicero also knows the figure of the laughing Democritus: Orat. 2.58.235.
12 See Aristotle, de Sensu 2, 438a5-13, = 68 A 121 DK; DL 9.44, = 68 A 1(44) DK; cf. Theophrastus, On the Senses 50, = 68 A 135(50) DK; educated readers would have recognized the theory from its Epicurean version. They are mentioned in Letter 19, 92,20-3 S.
13 Democritean infinity recurs literally at T26, figuratively at T12, and 17.9, 88,10-11 S: “The world itself is full of misanthropy: it has aggregated an infinity of ailments for them”.
14 11 is an outlier. Smith (1990, P. 23-4) notes that it “can stand alone, and could have provided a core around which the other letters were composed”. It might equally have been composed to unify them. However that may be, the entire collection, including the Embassy, the Decree, and the Speech at the Altar, is unified by important thematic motifs. The Decree says that Hippocrates “scorned offers from the Barbarian [king], who was hostile to and a common enemy of the Greeks” (106,21-2 S), and so he demonstrated his “great concern for their security” (25, 106,12-13 S).
15 Cf. Rep. 1 341c-42e, where Socrates argues that remuneration is not an intrinsic feature of any of the technai, which should aim to benefit the things that fall under their purview, rather than to enrich their practitioners.
16 Smith 1990, P. 22, 27-9; for the connections with the Cynics, see Stewart 1958. The clearly Cynical pseudo-Heraclitean letters derive from the same period, and cover similar themes: the disdain for money, the refusal to accept Persian gifts and honours, and a general contempt for the miserably degenerate condition of mankind (Attridge 1976). For Heraclitus, of course, it provokes grief rather than hilarity.
17 English translations in Singer 2014.
18 The famous herbalist to Mithridates VI of Pontus, was a Cratueas, as are several other recorded pharmacists: professions often ran in families. A 4th-century comedy by Alexis was called ‘Crateuas the Drug-Seller”, and the name may simply mean ‘druggist’. See Smith 1990, P. 19-20 n. 51.
19 Aphorisms 1.1: “The art is long, life short, opportunity fleeting, experience fallible, judgement difficult”; cf. Precepts 1: “kairos is that in which there is not much time”; cf. Diseases 1.5. The idea of the kairos turns up with a tinge of irony in T26. For human limitations, see The Art, esp. 4-8; Ancient Medicine 4, 9.
20 On black bile, melancholy, madness and social deviancy and their relations to the Hippocratic letters, see Hankinson 2019.
21 A term familiar from Hellenistic philosophy, in particular Epicureanism (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 127-32) and Pyrrhonism (PH 1.25-30), expressing the quietist ideal of an untroubled life; but it has genuine Democritean roots: Fr. 68 B 191 DK.
22 The opposition between Truth and Opinion recalls Parmenides’ poem, and its reverberations in subsequent Greek philosophy (cf. esp. Republic 5, 474c-80a). The distinction between appearance and reality lies at the heart of Democritus’s philosophical physics: “by convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention, hot, by convention, cold; in reality, atoms and the void” (Fr. 68 B 9 DK), while the basic contrast goes back at least to Xenophanes: Fr. 21 B 34 DK.
23 This picture is influenced by Plato’s account of the types of divinely-inspired madness (divinatory, ritual, poetic and erotic) in the Phaedrus (244b-245c). Plato’s philosopher is also characterized by detachment from the concerns of the material world, and an obsession with that of the Forms (Phaedo 64d-67b; Republic 5, 474b-480a; 6-7, 504e-534b). He is in the grip of an erotic love for truth, “and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him, unaware that he is possessed by a god. When someone sees the beauty that exists down here and is reminded of true beauty … he gazes aloft, … paying no attention to what is down below – this is why he is said to have gone mad” (Phaedrus 249c-250b).
24 Plane-trees were associated with Hippocrates; one alleged to be his own survives on his home island, Kos: https://web.archive.org/web/20080204230930/http://www.ihfk.gr/gr/hippotree_gr.html.
25 This recalls the setting of the Phaedrus: 229a-b, 230b-c; but see also Smith, 1990, 21 n 52.
26 This recalls the 5th Letter, where he describes Democritus’s reported symptoms, advises people to moderate (metriazein) their laughter (and their severity) “in order to appear most charming to some people, and a sage ruminating on virtue to others” (14, 66,12-16 S); “laughing at everything is bad; excessiveness is depraved, all the more so if it is continuous” (66,16-18 S). Sickness, death, and misfortune are not fit subjects for laughter. It would be good if, per impossibile, your nearest and dearest were never to suffer; “but people do fall sick, and you laugh; they die, and you are delighted; if you learn of something bad, and it cheers you up. You are the most wicked of men, Democritus, and far removed from wisdom” (66,18-26). He might even be melancholic after all (66,26-7).
27 Thersites, the physically and psychologically deformed Greek anti-hero, is a model of inappropriately boorish behaviour, and the object of contemptuous amusement: see Halliwell, 2008, P. 69-77. Democritus’s own comportment seems by conventional, indeed Hippocrates’, standards to be pretty boorish itself.
28 A subtle reference to the drugs furnished by Crateuas?
29 By masturbating (“I wish the belly would no longer feel hunger when rubbed” DL 6.46), and eating (DL 6.58) in public. “He said that wives should be held in common, the only marriage being the union of the persuasive man and the consenting woman” (DL 6.72). Stealing from temples, and eating meat, even human meat, was perfectly acceptable (DL 6.73). He told Alexander the Great to get out of his light (DL 6.38). “He lit a lamp in broad daylight, he went around saying ‘I’m looking for a man’” (DL 6.41). He was sold into slavery, but said that even so he alone was free and capable of governing men (DL 6.29-30, 74).
30 So did Chrysippus (Plutarch, Stoic Self-contradictions 1044f-1045a, = 67F LS), who also thought it a good idea to eat the bodies of one’s parents and one’s own severed limbs (PH 3.247-8, = 67G LS)
31 Above, n 19.
32 See Cantor, 2018, 379-81 on 19th century appropriations of the Artaxerxes story and its relations to AWP; and Jouanna, 1999, 23-4. See also Embassy 5, 114,36-116,21 S, where the Coans speak of their own heroism in resisting the Persians in the service of pan-Hellenic solidarity, and their sufferings as a result
33 This follows the famous story of his opposition to Carneades.
34 Parts of this paper were presented at Exeter University on May 10th 2018, others at the XVI Colloque Hippocratique in Rome on October 27th 2018. I am grateful to both my audiences for their questions, suggestions and comments.
Auteur
University of Texas at Austin - rjhankinson@austin.utexas.edu
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