The Roman Physicians in

Abstract

The major aim of this paper is to illuminate the healers and their art of healing (ars medicinae) at Rome from the beginning till the time of the emperors with the help of some different private funerary Latin inscriptions. It is a contribution into the broader context of the epigraphical and funerary culture of the Romans; it also emphasizes the importance of regarding epitaphs as integral elements within a network of ritual and social contexts. It will mainly pioneer and open up the following topics and try to scrutinize them separately: the historical development of the art of healing and healers at Rome; the various specialities of the Roman physicians; the role of the Roman woman as a physician; the efficiency and skill of the Roman physicians; the ways of payment for the Roman physicians. Thanks to some Latin epitaphs and literary sources we could know the effective and vivid role played by medicine and physicians of both ancient Greece and Rome. The sources, whether graphic or written, which have recently reached us, ensure that it had existed among the physicians a multitude of healers who were mere sorcerers, magicians and quacks than artists. (1) The ancient Romans derived their medical knowledge from the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Persians and other conquered peoples. Ancient Roman (*) I am very indebted to my professor Theodor Pékary (Münster University) for his remarks and valuable advices in examining the inscriptions dealt with in this paper. (1) Cic. Divin. I. 132: Cicero mentioned that Ennius had criticized the fraudulent practitioners and complained about an abundance of religious quacks in Rome, including harioli, who were driven by poverty, madness or lack of any other skill, to promise wealth for a drachma. Plaut. Mil. 692. Plautus told us that some of these religious quacks were women.