Salpe

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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.

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Pliny

Pliny cites Salpe six times in his Natural History . [1] She is described by him as an obstetrix, [2] though he ascribes general remedies to her, not simply those concerned with women's health. [3] Her remedies only survive in Pliny's references to them, not in her own words. [4] She uses both herbal and magical remedies to cure a variety of ailments including sunburn, stiff or numbed limbs, and dog bites. [4]

Athenaeus

In the Deipnosophistae , Athenaeus mentions a Salpe as the writer of Paignia. [2] He cites Nymphodorus of Syracuse, probably writing in the third century BC, as claiming that Salpe, the writer of the Paignia, was not a nickname for a Mnaseas, but was a woman from Lesbos. [2]

The Paignia is generally considered to have been a work of pornographic or erotic literature. [5] Athenaeus associates the work with Botrys of Messana, a fifth-century author described as a "shameful writer" by Timaeus. [6] Botrys' work was apparently similar to the pornographic sex-manual attributed to Philaenis. [4] The work was probably written in prose, as Botrys' earlier paignia had been. [7]

James Davidson argues that the Salpe mentioned by Athenaeus and the one cited by Pliny are likely to have been the same person. [8] David Bain has argued against Davidson's suggestion, [9] and I. M. Plant distinguishes between the two in his anthology of ancient women writers. [4] More recently, Rebecca Flemming writes that "despite Bain's objections it remains tempting" to link Pliny's and Athenaeus' Salpe; she suggests that the original Paignia referred to by Athenaeus was the original source of Pliny's recipes, though he would have read them second-hand (or "more probably third- or fourth-hand"). [10]

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References

  1. ↑ Davidson 1995, p. 591.
  2. 1 2 3 Davidson 1995, p. 590.
  3. ↑ Flemming 2007, p. 271.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Plant 2004, p. 115.
  5. ↑ Davidson 1995, pp. 590–1.
  6. ↑ Flemming 2007, p. 273.
  7. ↑ Bain 1998, p. 265.
  8. ↑ Davidson 1995, p. 592.
  9. ↑ Bain 1998.
  10. ↑ Flemming 2007, p. 274.

Works cited

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