Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Persians: Hippokratic author on the “sacred” disease and Magian attempts at healing (ca. 400 BCE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified March 25, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=18844.
Ancient author: Hippokratic author, On the Sacred Disease 1-5, 21 (link).
Comments: The author of this medical text (written around 400 BCE) argues that what is traditionally labelled the “sacred” disease is, in fact, no more sacred that any other disease. All diseases are affected by the climate, environment, and the four humours, which are in some sense divine or controlled by the gods. So this author shares some assumptions in common with the author of On Airs, Waters and Places (link).
In the process of arguing this, the Hippokratic author pinpoints specific alternative healers who are said to emphasize the “divine” nature of the disease and to use their own specific techniques to address it. Magians and those trained in Magian skill come first and seem to continue to be a principal target, but other experts offering purifications are also listed. This quite early source shows that, already by the late fifth century, Greeks could have the perception that Persian Magians (or people associated with Magians) were a source of secretive knowledge for healing specifically. The techniques listed include purifications, incantations (literally singing special chants over someone), and refraining from contact with certain foods and animal or plant products. Overall, this is a very early and negative take on Magian skill which can be contrasted to the perspective of the contemporary author of the Derveni papyrus (link).
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[Introduction to the so-called sacred disease]
(1) I am about to discuss the disease called “sacred” (ἱερῆς). It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred than other diseases. Instead, it has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men’s inexperience, and to their amazement at its peculiar character. Now while people continue to believe in its divine origin because they are at a loss to understand it, they really disprove its divinity by the facile method of healing which they adopt, consisting as it does of purifications and incantations. But if it is to be considered divine just because it is amazing, there will be not one sacred disease but many, for I will show that other diseases are no less amazing and portentous, and yet nobody considers them sacred. For instance, daily fevers, fevers that recur every third day, and those that recur every fourth day seem to me to be no less sacred and god-sent than this disease, but nobody is amazed at them. Then again one can witness people who are mad and delirious from no obvious cause, and engaging in many strange behaviours. While in their sleep, to my knowledge, many groan and shriek, others choke, others dart up and rush out of doors, being delirious until they wake. Then they become as healthy and rational as they were before, though pale and weak, and this happens not once but many times. Many other instances, of various kinds, could be given, but time does not permit us to speak of each individually.
[Refuting Magians, purifiers, itinerant collectors, and wanderers who claim a divine origin of the disease and the cures]
(2) It seems to me that those who first attributed a sacred character to this illness were like the Magians (magoi), purifiers (kathartai), itinerant collectors (or: begging priests; agyrtai), and wanderers (alazones) of our own day, people who claim great piety and superior knowledge. Being at a loss, and having no treatment which would help, they concealed this and used the gods as an excuse, calling this illness sacred so that their complete ignorance might not be noticed. They added a plausible story, and established a method of treatment that secured their own position. They used purifications (katharmoi) and incantations (epaoidai). They forbade the use of baths and of many foods that are unsuitable for sick people: of sea fishes, including red mullet, black-tail, hammer and the eel (these are the most harmful sorts); the flesh of goats, deer, pigs and dogs (meats that disturb most the digestive organs); the cock, pigeon and bustard, with all birds that are considered substantial foods; mint, leek and onion among the vegetables, as their pungent character is not at all suited to sick people; the wearing of black (black is the sign of death); and, not to lie on or wear goat-skin, not to put foot on foot or hand on hand (all which conduct is inhibitive).
They impose these observances because of the divine origin of the disease, claiming superior knowledge and alleging other causes. They do this so that, if the patient recovers, the reputation for cleverness may be theirs. However, if the patient dies, they may have a sure source of excuses, with the defence that the gods, and not they themselves, are to blame. Having given nothing to eat or drink, and not having steeped their patients in baths, no blame can be laid, they say, upon them. So I suppose that no Libyan dwelling in the interior can enjoy good health, since they lie on goat-skins and eat goats’ flesh, possessing neither blanket nor cloak nor shoe that is not from the goat. In fact, Libyans possess no cattle except goats. But if to eat or apply these things engenders and increases the disease, while to refrain works a cure, then neither is a god to blame nor are the purifications beneficial. It is the foods that cure or hurt, and the power of a god disappears.
(3) Accordingly I hold that those [i.e. Magians etc.] who attempt in this manner to cure these diseases cannot consider them either sacred or divine, because when they are removed by such purifications and by such treatment as this, there is nothing to prevent the production of attacks in men by devices that are similar. If so, something human is to blame, and not a god. A person who can take away such a condition using purifications and Magian skills can also by similar means bring it on, so that by this argument the action of the deity is disproved.
By these sayings and devices they claim superior knowledge, and deceive men by prescribing for them purifications and cleansings, most of their talk turning on the intervention of the deity and lower spirits (daimones). Yet in my opinion their discussions show, not piety, as they think, but impiety, implying that the gods do not exist. What they call piety and the divine is, as I will prove, impious and unholy.
[Magian skills impious, not pious]
(4) For if they [i.e. Magians etc.] profess to know how to bring down the moon, to eclipse the sun, to make storm and sunshine, rain and drought, the sea impassable and the earth barren, and all such amazing things, whether it be by rites (teletai) or by some proposition or practice that they can, according to the adepts, be effected, I am nonetheless sure that they are impious and cannot believe that the gods exist or have any strength. They would not refrain from the most extreme actions.
In this case, surely they are terrible in the eyes of the gods. For if a person who engages in Magian skill and sacrifices will bring the moon down, eclipse the sun, and cause storm and sunshine, I will not believe that any of these things is divine, but they are human, seeing that the power of the deity is overcome and enslaved by the proposition of man.
[Wrongly blaming specific gods for the illness]
Yet perhaps what they profess is not true. The fact is that people, in need of a livelihood, contrive and devise many fictions of all sorts, about this disease among other things. They put the blame, for each form of the condition, upon a particular god. If the patient imitates a goat, if he roars, or suffers convulsions in the right side, they say that the Mother of the Gods is to blame. If he utters a piercing and loud cry, they compare him to a horse and blame Poseidon. If he passes some excrement, as often happens under the stress of the disease, the surname Enodia is applied. If the excrement is more frequent and thinner, like that of birds, it is Apollo Nomios. If he foams at the mouth and kicks, Ares has the blame. When fears, terrors, delirium, jumpings from the bed and rushings out of doors occur during the night, they say that Hekate is attacking or that heroes are assaulting.
[Further reasons why they are impious]
Furthermore, in making use of purifications and incantations they do what I think is a very unholy and godless thing. For the sufferers from the disease they purify with blood and such things, as though they were polluted, guilty of shedding innocent blood, poisoned with a drug by people, or had committed some unholy act.
[Deities and sanctuaries pure, not defiling or infecting]
They should have treated all these in the opposite way; they should have brought them to the sanctuaries, with sacrifices and prayers, in supplication to the gods. As it is, however, they do nothing of the kind, but merely purify them. Of the purifying objects some they hide in the earth, others they throw into the sea, others they carry away to the mountains, where nobody can touch them or tread on them. Yet, if a god is in fact the cause, they should have taken them to the sanctuaries and offered them to him. However, I hold that a man’s body is not defiled by a god, the one being utterly corrupt the other perfectly holy. No, even if the body has been defiled or in any way injured through some different agency, a god is more likely to purify and sanctify it than he is to cause defilement. At least it is the deity that purifies, sanctifies and cleanses us from the greatest and most impious errors. We ourselves fix boundaries to the sanctuaries and precincts of the gods, so that nobody may cross them unless he is pure. When we enter we sprinkle ourselves, not as defiling ourselves thereby, but to wash away any pollution we may have already contracted. Such is my opinion about purifications.
[Actual cause of the disease]
(5) However, in my opinion this disease is no more divine than any other disease. It has the same nature as other diseases, and the cause that gives rise to individual diseases. It is also curable, no less than other illnesses, unless by long lapse of time it is so ingrained as to be more powerful than the remedies that are applied. Its origin, like that of other diseases, lies in heredity. . . . [omitted remainder of the author’s own natural – itself divine – explanation of the disease with reference to what enters the body, to the brain, to the seasons, and to humoural theory].
[Conclusion]
(21) This disease styled sacred comes from the same causes as others, from the things that enter and exit the body, from cold, sun, and from the changing restlessness of winds. These things are divine. So that there is no need to put the disease in a special category and to consider it more divine than the others. They are all divine and all human. Each has a nature and power of its own. None is hopeless or incapable of treatment. Most are cured by the same things as caused them. One thing is food for one thing, and another for another, though occasionally each actually does harm. So the physician must know how, by distinguishing the seasons for individual things, he may assign to one thing nutriment and growth, and to another diminution and harm. For in this disease as in all others it is necessary not to increase the illness, but to wear it down by applying to each what is most hostile to it, not that to which it is conformable. For what is conformity gives vigour and increase. What is hostile causes weakness and decay. Whoever knows how to cause in men by regimen moist or dry, hot or cold, he can cure this disease also, if he distinguishes the seasons for useful treatment, without having recourse to purifications and Magian knowledge (mageia).
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Source of translation: W.H.S. Jones, Hippocrates, vols. 1-4 (LCL; Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1923-31), public domain, adapted by Harland.