Abstract
This chapter analyzes passages in Latin literature that describe the unbinding of the human body through dissection, vivisection, or surgery. Demonstrating how medical prose sources (Scribonius Largus, Pliny the Elder, Celsus) can be read productively alongside Latin poets (Seneca the Younger, Ovid, and Lucan), it reveals how early imperial Latin writers consistently present acts of cutting into the human body as cruel, unnatural, dehumanizing, and medically illegitimate. These sources, it is argued, utilize similar rhetoric of paradox, ambiguity, and disgust to emphasize how such acts can blur the lines between life and death, and therefore problematize ethical considerations and processes of observation. Each text is also shown to conflate cutting into the human body with nefarious activities that reflect Roman anxieties concerning violations of bodily integrity.
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Notes
- 1.
I would like to thank Brian Sowers for our many engaging discussions about various aspects of embodiment in ancient literature and culture; David Rohrbacher and Craig Williams for their feedback on drafts of this chapter; and Phil Thibodeau for inviting me to give a presentation on this topic at The Brooklyn College Classics Seminar series, where I received valuable questions from the faculty and students in attendance. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this chapter for their helpful suggestions and advice.
- 2.
- 3.
e.g. ἄγνωστα γάρ ἐστι μάλιστα τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε δεῖ πρὸς τὰ τῶν ἄλλων μόρια ζῴων ἀνάγοντας σκοπεῖν, οἷς ἔχει παραπλησίαν τὴν φύσιν. (“The [inner parts] of human beings are especially unknown; as a result it is necessary to examine the parts of other animals whose nature is very similar.” Aristotle, Historia Animalium 1.16.494b21–4.) All translations in this chapter are by the author.
- 4.
ὅσα γὰρ τὴν τῶν ὀμμάτων ὄψιν ἐκφεύγει, ταῦτα τῇ τῆς γνώμης ὄψει κεκράτηται· (11.7–8) … Ὅταν δὲ ταῦτα μὴ μηνύωνται, μηδ’ αὐτὴ ἡ φύσις ἑκοῦσα ἀφίῃ, ἀνάγκας εὕρηκεν, ᾗσιν ἡ φύσις ἀζήμιος βιασθεῖσα μεθίησιν· ἀνεθεῖσα δὲ δηλοῖ τοῖσι τὰ τῆς τέχνης εἰδόσιν, ἃ ποιητέα. (“Whatever escapes the vision of the eyes is grasped by the vision of the mind. … When these signs are not revealed, and when nature does not willingly send them forth, medicine has found ways to set them loose without harm; having released them, it makes clear to experts what must be done.” Hippocrates, De Arte 12.9–11).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
The surgical procedures that Largus does mention are topical treatments such as plasters, rather than procedures that involve cutting deeply into the body. (Jocks 2013: 60).
- 9.
ἀσκεῖν περὶ τὰ νοσήματα δύο, ὠφελεῖν ἢ μὴ βλάπτειν. (“As for diseases, endeavor either to help or not to do harm.” Epidemics 1.11).
- 10.
οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιθιῶντας… (“I will not cut, even for the stone…” The Oath).
- 11.
Post ubi ne ad haec quidem cedunt difficultates adversae valetudinis, tunc coacta ad sectionem vel ultimo ad ustionem devenit. (“Afterward if these struggles of adverse health do not dissipate, then [the physician] is forced on to surgery and finally to cautery.” Compositiones Pref.6.7–9).
- 12.
The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus (Frag. 58 Diehls-Kranz) also places surgery and cauterization in close juxtaposition, and associates both with the cruel infliction of pain and illegitimate medical practice.
- 13.
- 14.
Plutarch characterizes surgery similarly in his Life of Marius, relating a story in which Marius submitted himself to surgery to treat varicose veins in both of his legs. After enduring extreme agony during the surgery on the first leg, he decided to forgo treatment on the other, deeming the pain of the treatment worse than the condition itself (Life of Marius 6).
- 15.
Pellegrino and Pellegrino (1988: 29).
- 16.
ὁμοίως δὲ οὐδὲ γυναικὶ πεσσὸν φθόριον δώσω. (“And likewise I will not give a destructive pessary to a woman.” The Oath).
- 17.
Quo enim nefas existimaverint spem dubiam hominis laedere, quanto scelestius perfecto iam nocere iudicabunt? (“For to what extent will those people, who consider it a crime to injure the uncertain hope of a person, consider it more wicked to do harm to a fully formed person?” Compositiones Pref.5.4–6).
- 18.
Glare 2012: s.v. nefas . This is not a complete list of all possible translations, but rather a sampling of some of the most salient options.
- 19.
Largus’ attitude toward abortion was far from universal in classical antiquity, even among physicians. Numerous extant sources, medical and otherwise, discuss abortion openly and without judgment, and sometimes prescribe abortifacient drugs; see esp. Lefkowitz and Fant (2005: 88, 188, 232–233, 235–237, 248, 252–255, 266).
- 20.
On the distinction between “trauma surgery” (which was generally avoided in antiquity) and “non-trauma surgery”, see Witt (2018: 219).
- 21.
- 22.
Beagon (1992: 20, 233–240).
- 23.
Sunt occulti interaneorum morbi, de quibus mirum proditur. Si catuli priusquam videant adplicentur triduo stomacho maxime ac pectori et ex ore aegri suctum lactis accipiant, transire vim morbi, postremo exanimari dissectisque palam fieri aegri causas… (“There are obscure diseases of the intestines, for which a wonderful cure is prescribed. If, before they can see, puppies are applied for three days especially to the stomach or chest of a person who is ill and they lap up milk from the person’s mouth, the power of the disease will be transferred to them; on the following day they will die and the causes of the sickness will become clear through dissection…” NH 30.20).
- 24.
Presumably, the puppies are to be applied to an incision on the patient’s abdomen, but Pliny does not make this aspect of the procedure entirely clear.
- 25.
Pliny is again vague here, but I assume that the patient is supposed to imbibe, but not swallow, the milk before the puppies are applied.
- 26.
E.g. Harundines et tela quaeque alia extrahenda sunt corpori evocat mus dissectus inpositus, praecipue vero lacerta dissecta vel caput tantum eius contusum cum sale inpositum… (“A mouse, split open and placed upon [an injury]—or better yet, a lizard (or even just the lizard’s head) that is split open, crushed, and placed with salt upon [the injury]—draws out arrows, weapons, and other things that need to be removed from the body [of a human being]…” NH 30.42).
- 27.
Beagon (1992: 110). Comparable attitudes are reflected in Greek and Roman practices of branding and tattooing. Branding was typically used on animals (especially horses), and tattooing was typically performed upon dehumanized groups, such as “barbarians,” slaves, and prisoners of war (Jones 1987: 145–152, 154–155).
- 28.
Beagon (1992: 20).
- 29.
Quis ista invenit, Osthane? Tecum enim res erit, eversor iuris humani monstrorumque artifex, qui primus ea condidisti, credo, ne vita tui oblivisceretur. (“Who discovered those things, Osthanes? For the blame will rest with you, subverter of human rights and deviser of horrors, you who first established these things in order that your life would not be forgotten.” NH 28.2; see also NH 30.2).
- 30.
- 31.
Bidez and Cumont (1938).
- 32.
…mox a saevitia secandi urendique transisse nomen in carnificem et in taedium artem omnesque medicos… (“…soon from his cruel use of cutting and burning he acquired the name ‘The Executioner’ and his profession—along with all the physicians—became an object of loathing…” NH 29.6).
- 33.
Tertium capto Lacedaemonii pectus dissecuere viventi, hirsutumque cor repertum est. (“Having captured him a third time, the Spartans cut open his chest with while he was still alive, and discovered that his heart was hirsute.” NH 11.70).
- 34.
Elsewhere Pliny states that a hairy heart is a mark of courageousness (NH 11.185), but his story of Aristomenes does not make mention of this physiognomic belief.
- 35.
For an ancient source that mentions Celsus’ non-extant works, see Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria 12.11.24.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
Mazzini (1999).
- 39.
This issue has been highly disputed in recent years, but the balance of modern opinion is in favor of accepting Celsus’ reports as true (Vallance 2004: 763, 772).
- 40.
von Staden (1992: 223–231).
- 41.
Guerrini also observes an erasure of the boundaries between human and non-human animals, along with the deprivation of personal rights and agency, in these Hellenistic vivisections (Guerrini 2003: 8).
- 42.
- 43.
- 44.
See De Medicina Prooemium.1.26.
- 45.
Singleton (1994: esp. 585–587).
- 46.
Ob haec ne mortuorum quidem lacerationem necessariam esse (quae etsi non crudelis, tamen foeda sit), cum aliter pleraque in mortuis se habeant; quantum vero in vivis cognosci potest, ipsa curatio ostendat. (“On account of these things, since most things are altered in the dead, some hold that even dissection of the dead is unnecessary (which, although not cruel, is disgusting), and that all that is possible to know in the living, the treatment itself displays.” Celsus, De Medicina Prooemium.1.44).
- 47.
- 48.
Cicero also cites the empiricists’ perspective on the effects of cutting into the human body in support of his argument that human beings are not capable of understanding their own bodies. This is part of his larger argument that human beings are unable to comprehend the nature of the universe (Prior Academics 2.122).
- 49.
Mudry similarly observes: “la viguer de l’expression a surpris” (Mudry 1982: 137).
- 50.
Glare (2012): s.v. latrocinor, latrocinium.
- 51.
…ita sedem, positum, ordinem, figuram, similiaque alia cognoscere prudentem medicum, non caedem sed sanitatem molientem, idque per misericordiam discere, quod alii dira crudelitate cognorint. (“…thus, they say a wise practitioner recognizes site, position, arrangement, shape, and other such things not through slaughter but through striving for health; and he learns through an act of compassion what others would come to know through harsh cruelty.” De Medicina, Prooemium.1.43).
- 52.
On Tertullian’s views regarding God’s role in this act of concealment, see von Staden (1989: 143).
- 53.
Glare (2012): s.v. simplex.
- 54.
Ibid.: s.v. errare.
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
Schiesaro (2003).
- 58.
For the full passage (in Latin and English), see the above section on the methodology of this chapter.
- 59.
Tarrant (1985: 199) similarly observes that Atreus “pursues his ritual tasks with the calm of a practiced surgeon”.
- 60.
Glare (2012): s.v. amputare.
- 61.
See vv. 1006–1021.
- 62.
Most notes a preoccupation in Senecan poetry (and Neronian poetry more generally) with portraying acts of bodily mutilation that result in ambiguous ontological states (Most 1992: 406, 409–410; see also Segal 1983), and Sedley perceives a similar inclination in Stoic philosophy to correlate amputation with paradoxes of identity (Sedley 1982: 267–270).
- 63.
Even after they have been consumed, the children continue to be portrayed as active and “alive” in a number of ways, especially as participants in Thyestes’ suffering. In addition to becoming a perpetual cause for grief (see esp. v. 1112), their dynamic presence is vividly apparent when Thyestes experiences a kind of indigestion and his stomach emits “groans” (gemitu, v. 1001) after he has consumed his grim meal. Here, Seneca disgustingly invites the reader to imagine that the children’s body parts are still animated and contributing to Thyestes’ distress as they twitch around in his entrails.
- 64.
Glare (2012): s.v. exanimis, exanimus.
- 65.
- 66.
e.g. vv. 193, 219, 220, 744, 1006, 1041, 1047, 1105.
- 67.
- 68.
On the prevalence of these sorts of sympathetic interactions in both Senecan poetry and prose, see Rosenmeyer (1989).
- 69.
For these astronomical aberrations, see vv. 789–884.
- 70.
Tarrant (1985: 48). See esp. vv. 712–713, 885, 911.
- 71.
Noting these correspondences, Tarrant suggests that the speech from Thyestes is in fact “based on Ovid’s account of the flaying of Marsyas” (ibid.: 199). He does not, however, comment on the fact that both passages represent acts of vivisection.
- 72.
The word membrum, which is used to refer to dismembered body parts in v. 761 and elsewhere in Thyestes (vv. 60, 1062), can also refer to “a small section of a speech or literary work” (Glare 2012: s.v. membrum). Seneca’s use of this polysemic word may therefore hint at a correlation between bodily mutilation and literary borrowing or allusion (Most 1992: 407–409). In his analysis of Lucan’s poem, Dinter detects a similar connection between the human body and the literary corpus, regarding the “vivisection of the human body…as a translation or realization of literary into corporeal imagery” (Dinter 2012: 27).
- 73.
- 74.
Anderson comments on Ovid’s intense interest in the anatomical details in this narrative, comparing his fixation to Renaissance artists and anatomical illustrators who were fascinated with graphically depicting the flaying of St. Bartholomew (Anderson 1972: 202).
- 75.
Ibid.: 202–203.
- 76.
Other highly relevant passages include 1.140–143; 2.101–109; 2.145–151; 2.169–173; 2.177–193; 7.617–631.
- 77.
- 78.
Spaeth (2014: 55).
- 79.
- 80.
Rives (1995: 77–80, 83–85).
- 81.
See esp. Horace, Epode 5.27–28, where the witch Canidia plots to cut open a young boy’s body and extract his marrow and liver for use in a love potion. See also Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.13.
- 82.
Dinter (2012: 68–72).
- 83.
Such similarities and ambiguities are especially prominent in the Hippocratic treatises On the Sacred Disease and Dreams. See also van der Eijk (2004: 1, 6–8).
- 84.
To my knowledge, scholars have not previously remarked upon the fact that similar diction occurs in all three of these passages. Since we do not have secure dates for either Lucan’s On the Civil War or Seneca’s Thyestes, the exact lines of influence are impossible to disentangle: it is possible that Lucan was drawing upon either Ovid or Seneca (or both), or that Seneca was drawing upon either Ovid or Lucan (or both).
- 85.
The phrase plena…deo indicates human beings generally, under the Stoic view that an element of the divine resides in all living people (Tesoriero 2000: 214).
- 86.
- 87.
Beagon (1992: 20, 108–109). Tesoriero also detects a possible element of wordplay that would connect these concerns about violations of the body and of nature: since natura can also denote the genitals, the phrase may emphasize that these “births” are unnatural because they “are not delivered through the generative organs” (Tesoriero 2000: 138).
- 88.
On the close connection between witchcraft and human sacrifice in ancient thought, see Tesoriero (2000: 136–137).
- 89.
Witt indicates that attitudes toward invasive forms of cutting played an analogous role in the Greek medical marketplace (Witt 2018: 229–230, 245).
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Goyette, M. (2021). Deep Cuts: Rhetoric of Human Dissection, Vivisection, and Surgery in Latin Literature. In: Hsu, K.L., Schur, D., Sowers, B.P. (eds) The Body Unbound. The New Antiquity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65806-9_5
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