Manteis and Medicine

Abstract

The many scholars who have supposed that there were persons known as iatromanteis (healing-seers) who offered medical assistance in archaic and classical Greece have been in error—there was no such occupation. But manteis (seers) did sometimes offer medical advice in classical Greece, in addition to their other roles, especially—so it seems—during epidemics and to chronic patients, and notwithstanding the rise of Hippocratic medicine. The evidence to this effect is more extensive than is commonly realized.