See, for example, the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, XXX, ‘Problems concerned with Thought, Intelligence and Wisdom’. O. Temkin, however, in his book The Sacred Disease, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, 2nd edn, 1971, strongly argues against the proposition that Euripides was trying to depict Heracles as an epileptic
2.
‘The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides' Bacchae’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, XC, 1970, pp. 35–48
3.
Herodotus, The Histories, VI.75 ff, translated by de SelincourtA., Penguin, Harmondsworth1968
4.
For another example of divinely inspired madness in Herodotus, see his account of the Persian king Cambyses in Book III. Cambyses' madness was said by the Egyptians to be a punishment for his sacrilegious slaying of the sacred Apiscalf. Herodotus is sceptical here, preferring to regard Cambyses' insanity as having developed from his life-long epilepsy
5.
Aristophanes, Wasps, 85ff.
6.
Hippocrates, The Sacred Disease, chs II and IV
7.
The question of religious pollution is the subject of R. Parker's book, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion, Clarendon, Oxford, 1983; see especially pp. 208ff for his discussion of katharmos. Washing the hands is one of the compulsive acts of neurotics, and may involve a symbolism like that of ritual purification
8.
Strangely, the 43 epigraphically attested cures from the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus do not contain a single example of a cure for insanity. For Asclepius, see E. J. &EdelsteinL., Asclepius: a Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore1945
9.
For the therapeutic nature of Corybantism, seeDoddsE. R., The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1951, pp. 78ff.
10.
Plato, Laws 790 e
11.
Op. cit. p. 213
12.
Theophrastus, History of Plants, 9.10
13.
Op. cit. pp. 79ff.
14.
Aristophanes, Fragment 58, inAustinC., Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta in Papyris Reperta, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin1973
15.
Hippocrates, The Sacred Disease, ch. IV
16.
Matthew, 28
17.
The German word Larve, ‘grub’, also retains its Latin derivative meaning of ‘spectre’ or ‘ghoul’
18.
Cf., Paulus, Digest 21.1.43, where the opposition of lunaticus to furiosus, the regular word for insane, shows that it cannot mean ‘insane’
19.
‘Remarks on Ancient Psychopathology’, Isis, 46, 1955, pp. 223–34
20.
See, for example, Pseudo-Aristotle, Problems, XXX (cited in footnote 1) for the ‘melancholic man’
21.
The concept of the ‘psychic pneuma’ was still current as late as the seventeenth century AD. The English physician Thomas Willis wrote in 1682 that epilepsy was caused by the explosion of ‘spiritus animalis’ in the middle of the brain. Spiritus animalis is an exact Latin translation of the Greek psychicon pneuma, and the psyche was located, in Greek thought, in the centre of the brain. I owe this reference to Thomas Willis to Professor M. J. Eadie
22.
Caelius Aurelianus, Acute Diseases, 1.35
23.
idem, Chronic Diseases 1.144 ff.
24.
Ibid., 180ff.
25.
Celsus, De Medicina, V.21
26.
Cited by Aurelianus, Chronic Diseases, IV. 131 ff.
27.
See Celsus, op. cit. III. 18 and Aurelianus, Acute Diseases 1. 58 ff and Chronic Diseases 1.155 ff, for all these and the following methods of treatment
28.
Op. cit., III.18.10
29.
Ibid., sections 4, 10, 21
30.
Chronic Diseases 1.175
31.
The story is told by Cicero, De Senectute (On Old Age), ch. 22, and Plutarch, Moralia 785a
Digest, 1.18.14, from Macer's De ludiciis Publicis (On Criminal Trials), translated by S. P. Scott, in The Civil Law, vol. I, pp. 259–60, AMS Press, New York, 1973. I am indebted for this reference to my colleague, Dr S. Dixon
35.
SimonB., Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece: the Classical Roots of Modern Psychiatry, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1978, pp. 209ff.
36.
‘Mental Health in Plato's Republic’, in KennyA., The Anatomy of the Soul: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of the Mind, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1973, pp. 1–27
