Aspasia was an ancient Greek medical writer known only from book 16 of Aetius of Amida's Tetrabiblion. [1] She is cited eleven times by Aetius. [2] John Scarborough suggests that Aspasia was a contemporary of Aetius and an expert in gynaeology and obstetrics. [1]
Because Aspasia is not attested anywhere outside of the last book of Aetius, and because of the name Aspasia, which Rebecca Flemming says held "obvious appeal ... in a gynacological context", Flemming has argued that it should not be assumed that Aspasia was a real woman physician. [3] Steven Muir and Laurence Totelin suggest that the name, evoking Pericles' lover, might have been chosen to lend authority to obstetric and gynacological material. [4] However, Holt Parker questions this view. He observes that Aspasia was a common name, and argues that there are other women whose names would have been more suitable to invoke than Pericles' Aspasia, such as Socrates' mother Phaenarete, said by Socrates to have been a midwife. He further notes that male medical writers with medically-related names, such as Asclepius or Asclepiades, do not have their existence questioned on this basis. [5]
Procopius of Caesarea was a prominent late antique Greek scholar and historian from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman general Belisarius in Emperor Justinian's wars, Procopius became the principal Roman historian of the 6th century, writing the History of the Wars, the Buildings, and the Secret History.
(, Greek: Περικλῆς; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed by Thucydides, a contemporary historian, as "the first citizen of Athens". Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens as Archon (ruler), roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles", but the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars or as late as the following century.
Eunomius, one of the leaders of the extreme or "anomoean" Arians, who are sometimes accordingly called Eunomians, was born at Dacora in Cappadocia or at Corniaspa in Pontus. early in the 4th century.
Aspasia was a metic woman in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles, with whom she had a son named Pericles the Younger. According to the traditional historical narrative, she worked as a courtesan and was tried for asebeia (impiety), though modern scholars have questioned the factual basis for either of these claims, which both derive from ancient comedy. Though Aspasia is one of the best-attested women from the Greco-Roman world, and the most important woman in the history of fifth-century Athens, almost nothing is certain about her life.
The Menexenus is a Socratic dialogue of Plato, traditionally included in the seventh tetralogy along with the Greater and Lesser Hippias and the Ion. The speakers are Socrates and Menexenus, who is not to be confused with Socrates' son Menexenus. The Menexenus of Plato's dialogue appears also in the Lysis, where he is identified as the "son of Demophon", as well as the Phaedo.
Sophroniscus, husband of Phaenarete, was the father of the philosopher Socrates.
The Basilica of San Vitale is a late antique church in Ravenna, Italy. The sixth-century church is an important surviving example of early Byzantine art and architecture, and its mosaics in particular are some of the most-studied works in Byzantine art. It is one of eight structures in Ravenna inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Its foundational inscription describes the church as a basilica, though its centrally-planned design is not typical of the basilica form. Within the Roman Catholic Church it holds the honorific title of basilica for its historic and ecclesial importance.
Aëtius of Amida was a Byzantine Greek physician and medical writer, particularly distinguished by the extent of his erudition. His birth and death years are not known, but his writings appear to date from the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th.
Aeschines of Sphettus or Aeschines Socraticus, son of Lysanias, of the deme Sphettus of Athens, was a philosopher who in his youth was a follower of Socrates. Historians call him Aeschines Socraticus—"the Socratic Aeschines"—to distinguish him from the more historically influential Athenian orator also named Aeschines. His name is sometimes but now rarely written as Aischines or Æschines.
A funeral oration or epitaphios logos is a formal speech delivered on the ceremonial occasion of a funeral. Funerary customs comprise the practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. In ancient Greece and, in particular, in ancient Athens, the funeral oration was deemed an indispensable component of the funeral ritual.
Diotima of Mantinea is the name or pseudonym of an ancient Greek character in Plato's dialogue Symposium, possibly an actual historical figure, indicated as having lived circa 440 B.C. Her ideas and doctrine of Eros as reported by the character of Socrates in the dialogue are the origin of the concept today known as Platonic love.
Theodora was a Byzantine empress and wife of emperor Justinian I. She was from humble origins and became empress when her husband became emperor in 527. She was one of his chief advisers. Theodora is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church, commemorated on 14 November.
Sicamus Aëtius, sometimes called Aëtius Sicanius or Siculus, was a Byzantine medical writer and the author of a treatise On Melancholy, Latin De Melancholia, which is commonly printed among the works of Galen. His date is uncertain, but if he is not the same person as Aëtius of Amida, he must have lived after him, as his treatise corresponds exactly with part of the latter's great medical work. It is compiled from Galen, Rufus of Ephesus, Posidonius, and Marcellus Empiricus.
Metrodora was possibly the author of an ancient Greek medical text, On the Diseases and Cures of Women. She is known from a single Byzantine manuscript. The manuscript, in the collection of the Laurentian Library in Florence, is a collection of writings on medical topics; the first part, attributed to Metrodora, focuses on obstetrics and women's medicine.
Salpe was an ancient Greek midwife cited by Pliny the Elder, and a writer of a work called the Paignia mentioned in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae. It is uncertain whether Athenaeus and Pliny discuss the same person, or whether they were two distinct people.
Armand D'Angour is a British classical scholar and classical musician, Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford. His research embraces a wide range of areas across ancient Greek culture, and has resulted in publications that contribute to scholarship on ancient Greek music and metre, innovation in ancient Greece, Latin and Greek lyric poetry, the biography of Socrates and the status of Aspasia of Miletus. He writes poetry in ancient Greek and Latin, and was commissioned to compose odes in ancient Greek verse for the 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games.
Antiochus was a physician of ancient Greece who appears to have lived at Rome in the 2nd century AD. The ancient physician Galen gives a precise account of the food he used to eat and the way in which he lived, and tells us that by paying attention to his diet he was able to dispense with the use of medicines, and when upwards of eighty years old used to visit his patients on foot. Byzantine Greek medical writer Aëtius of Amida and Paulus Aegineta quote a prescription which may perhaps belong to this physician, but he is probably not the person mentioned by Galen under the name "Antiochus Philometor".
Cleopatra the Physician was a Greek medical writer and author of a manual entitled Cosmetics. Six fragments of her Cosmetics survive in quotation from later medical writers.
Fabulla or Fabylla was a medical writer of the Roman Empire, whose work survives only as two quotations in Galen.
Modern historians' knowledge of ancient Roman gynecology and obstetrics primarily comes from Soranus of Ephesus' four-volume treatise on gynecology. His writings covered medical conditions such as uterine prolapse and cancer and treatments involving materials such as herbs and tools such as pessaries. Ancient Roman doctors believed that menstruation was designed to rid the female body of excess fluids. They believed that menstrual blood had special powers. Roman doctors may also have noticed conditions such as premenstrual syndrome.