THE IAMATIKA AND THE CULT OF ASCLEPIUS

Margherita Maria Di Nino, Giuseppe Zanetto, Bing and others have elucidated well the relation of the iamatika to the cult and cures of Asclepius, yet several details have gone unnoticed in these discussions.Footnote ⁵ Let us begin with the first poem of the collection, AB 95. This poem is a bit unlike the rest: twice as long as the other iamatika, it celebrates the skills of a mortal physician, a certain Medeus of Olynthus, son of Lampon, rather than Asclepius.Footnote ⁶ Asclepius appears only indirectly through reference to the Asclepiads, probably in this instance an association of physicians claiming ties to their patron deity, although the sons and daughters of the god, including Panacea, may have been intended, especially given the mention of a ‘panacea’ in the poem (ὧι πανάκειαν | τὴν Ἀσκληπιαδῶν πᾶσαν ἔδωκε πατήρ, 5–6).Footnote ⁷ Furthermore, AB 95 describes a bronze statue of an extremely emaciated, nearly lifeless individual – just the sort, the epigram claims, whom Medeus often healed – dedicated by Medeus not to Asclepius but to Pythian Apollo.

All of these elements, while unusual within the collection of iamatika, are entirely within the traditions of Asclepius’ cult, and ultimately the poem has more to do with Asclepius than we might assume. Many physicians shared strong ties to Asclepius: they served as priests of the god, made dedications in his sanctuaries, toted images of him on their medicine boxes, etc., so it is no surprise to find a poem that celebrates a mortal physician – an ‘Asclepiad’ no less – included in a collection focussed otherwise on the healing of Asclepius.Footnote ⁸ It is a nice touch, too, that Asclepius’ father Apollo, also a healing deity, has a presence in a poem that emphasizes the familial and medical ties between Medeus and his own father Lampon. Moreover, Apollo appears alongside his son often in the latter's sanctuaries (as well as in other medical contexts, such as the opening of the Hippocratic Oath). Bastianini and Gallazzi (n.10 [2001], 222) in their commentary on this poem note that the iamata from Epidaurus acknowledge Apollo's role explicitly: they are prefaced by the heading ‘Healings of Apollo and Asclepius’ (IG IV² 1 121.2). The first of the iamatika thus parallels quite nicely the prominence given to Apollo at the opening of the Epidaurian iamata, which suggests in turn that the healing inscriptions served as a primary model not only for the content of the individual poems of Posidippus but also for their arrangement within the collection. One final point about Apollo: the statue is dedicated to Apollo Pythius, and this particular Apollo was often associated with Asclepius. One of the earliest dedications at the Asclepieum in Epidaurus is a bronze lebes of the early fifth century inscribed to Apollo Pythius (IG IV² 1.142), and we find evidence for Pythian Apollo at other Asclepiea.Footnote ⁹ Thus while scholars have assumed that the statue in AB 95 must have been erected at Delphi because it is a gift to Pythian Apollo, this is not as clear-cut as it might appear at first glance.Footnote ¹⁰ I would contend instead that ‘Pythius’ in AB 95 need not indicate the location of the statue but points to a prominent cultic association between Apollo Pythius and Asclepius.Footnote ¹¹

Let us turn now briefly from AB 95 to the rest of the collection. The only two geographic names mentioned in the epigrams are Cos and Crete, the homes of two individuals cured by Asclepius (Sosius in AB 97 and Asclas in AB 99). It is significant that both, too, were locations of flourishing Asclepiea by the time of Posidippus in the third century: Lebena on the south coast of Crete had a popular sanctuary of Asclepius (and there were others on Crete), while Cos not only had a large Asclepieum but was known for its Asclepiads, a group that claimed descent from Asclepius, and was also the birthplace of Hippocrates.Footnote ¹² The Asclepiea at Lebena and Cos, moreover, both have attested traditions of inscribed iamata.Footnote ¹³ The inscriptions at Lebena (ICr I xvii 8–16; cf. also 17–20) date to the second century b.c.e. and thus postdate Posidippus, but it is entirely probable that this epigraphic habit extended to the early years of the sanctuary, which was established in the fourth century. No such inscriptions have been recovered at Cos but later testimonia suggest that inscribed iamata were an outstanding feature of the Coan Asclepieum, too (Str. 374; Plin. HN 29.2). Posidippus’ epigrams thus evoke not just a single sanctuary such as Epidaurus but point to the spread of the god's cult centres and traditions across the Aegean by the third century.

Furthermore, as Bing has observed, most of the ailments mentioned in the iamatika appear also in the iamata; the only exceptions are asp bites (AB 95) and deafness (AB 99). We can expand on this observation. Aside from the asp bites, to which I shall return below, all of these ailments are chronic rather than acute or typically fatal conditions. Much like the iamata, the iamatika emphasize the enduring nature of these ailments by specific mention of the long periods of time that they were suffered: six years for epilepsy and a festering wound (AB 97.3 and 98.1), twenty-five years for blindness (AB 100.2), and a vague but still lengthy period of forced confinement to bed due to what appears to be paralysis of the legs (πολυχρόνιον δέμνιον, AB 96.4). Although Posidippus’ interest in numbers and measurement is not unique to the iamatika (we find it, for example, in AB 18 and 56),Footnote ¹⁴ it seems quite likely that Posidippus was aware of this particular convention of the iamata and took care to incorporate it, too, into his poems about Asclepius.Footnote ¹⁵ Even the absence of any explicit mention of Asclepius’ name in two of the epigrams coincides with the iamata: rarely does the god's name appear in the Epidaurian inscriptions (it appears only twice, for instance, within the twenty narratives inscribed on the first stele: IG I² I 121.12 and 85).

Indeed, then, the general picture of the cult that Posidippus’ poems convey as outlined here – of individuals seeking cures for chronic ailments above all, of connections between physicians and Asclepius, of cultic ties between Asclepius and Pythian Apollo in particular, and of the spread of the god's cult and sanctuaries well beyond mainland Greece, in addition to the many points that Bing, Zanetto and Di Nino have elucidated – is consistent with the iamata and much other evidence for worship of Asclepius. The collection draws on well-established tropes to evoke the context and practice of Asclepius’ cult. Nor should we be surprised to find that a learned poet knew the cult well enough to epitomize aspects of it accurately in his own version of the cures – although this is not to say that the editor of the collection, whether Posidippus or another individual, did not adapt these conventions to meet certain literary and/or political aims. To the latter we shall turn now.

MODERATION IN THE IAMATIKA

Bing analyses the arrangement of iamatika as a deliberately planned sequence, whether arranged by Posidippus himself or an editor, and argues that the collection has a moralizing tone, again much like the iamata.Footnote ¹⁶ The final poem, AB 101, which is addressed to Asclepius, departs from the generic conventions that the earlier poems had led us to expect. Rather than naming an explicit patient/petitioner, it discusses a general class of such people and links thereby to the first poem of the collection wherein Medeus’ patients likewise remain anonymous. Moreover, it reads like a maxim: the poet states that the best man asks for two remedies, moderate wealth and health.Footnote ¹⁷

Bing argues that the tone of moral exhortation in this poem encourages us to re-evaluate the preceding cures through the lens of moderation. Given that an epigram praising those who seek moderation in wealth (ὄλβον μέτριον, 1) alongside health (ὑγίειαν, 3) – the two are conjoined in the phrase ἄκη δύο – falls at the end of a series of poems describing the sudden cures of Asclepius, Bing suggests that Posidippus’ readers are encouraged thereby to notice that some of the cures in the iamatika, especially in the later poems, are immoderate, particularly those that have an ambiguous outcome: Asclas, cured of his deafness, can now hear conversations through brick walls (διὰ πλίνθων), a level of aural acuity that he may not have expected or ultimately wanted (AB 99), and Zeno, blind for twenty-five years, sees the sun for only two days before he sees Unseeing (Ἀΐδης) for the rest of time (that is, he dies; AB 100). The moral: be careful what you wish – perfect health does not always result in happiness and miraculous cures can have unforeseen consequences. Such praise of moderation, Bing continues, is in keeping with Stoic thought, which scholars have detected elsewhere in Posidippus’ poetry; the very name Zeno in AB 100 may even allude to the famous Stoic thinker who appears in another epigram (AB 123.3). So far, so good.Footnote ¹⁸

Bing proceeds to argue that the theme of moderation in the final iamatikon casts interesting light back onto AB 95 at the start of the collection. The exhortation towards moderation, complete with a series of object lessons, is directed towards those who seek divine cures rather than cures administered by mortals such as the physician Medeus in the first poem. Human healing, according to Bing, is metrion and Medeus is an ἄριστος ἀνήρ like the one mentioned in AB 101.Footnote ¹⁹ Elsewhere Bing has shown that this Medeus is almost certainly the same individual known from other evidence to have been a prominent official in the Ptolemaic court: a priest of Alexander and the Theoi Adelphoi (a cult in honour of Ptolemy II and his wife and sister Arsinoe II) and administrator of a fund related to medical services (τὰ ἰατρικά, perhaps a tax of some sort) – in other words, one may assume, a highly skilled and respected physician and, as Bing describes, ‘a V.I.P., a player in the upper reaches of Philadelphus’ court.’Footnote ²⁰

Pace Bing, I would like to suggest that the exhortation towards moderation evident in the arrangement of iamatika includes in its compass not only those who seek immoderate cures from the gods and expect their lives to be perfect as a result, but also the sort of mortal healer characterized by Medeus: that is, an immoderate one. The very length of the first poem, double that of the others, suggests a relative lack of moderation and in turn may reflect the immoderate claims of this physician, especially when read against the other poems in the immediate collection. The first epigram states that Medeus not only invented a cure for the bite of a deadly asp but that many of the patients he cured, like the man depicted in the statue, were on the brink of death, barely gathering life into the eyes (μόγ̣ι̣[ς] ζ̣ωὴν ὄμματι συλλέγε̣ται, 2). Saving patients from death was a claim made about several famous physicians in antiquity, as evident for instance in other, albeit later, epigrams (e.g. Anth. Plan. 270, regarding Galen; and 273, regarding Praxagoras) as well as other literature (e.g. Apul. Flor. 19, regarding Asclepiades), but treatment of individuals on the threshold of death is not something we find in the healing narratives of Asclepius’ cult (although we do see it in his mythology, as discussed below).Footnote ²¹ If a worshipper of Asclepius had been thus cured we would expect him or her to praise the god for this feat, yet never do we see such rhetoric in the iamata where, given the likelihood that these narratives were edited by cult personnel and possibly even embellished, such claims would almost certainly have appeared. Thus Medeus seems to be claiming an ability that not even his patron deity (a bond made explicit by ‘Asclepiads’ in line 10) exercises. Moreover, Bing notes that others in antiquity insisted that the bite of the asp was incurable and fatal.Footnote ²² If Medeus did discover a cure for the bite of the Libyan asp, it seems not to have survived him, although loss of such knowledge would hardly be surprising given how many prescriptions and treatments remain unknown to us.

The dangers of immoderation in both wealth and ambition on the part of physicians, particularly with respect to treating fatal conditions, is a component of Asclepius’ own mythology.Footnote ²³ In Pythian 3.54–60, Pindar posits greed for monetary gain as the primary reason why Asclepius overstepped his bounds and tried to bring a dead man back to life, an extreme cure and an act that he would never repeat (he was sent to Hades by Zeus and only with great effort was Apollo able to have this punishment reversed; cf. Euripides’ Alcestis, where Apollo serves a mortal for one year in exchange for his son's return from Hades):

It is clear that Pindar casts the aspersion about greed not just on Asclepius but also on mortal physicians (ἀλλὰ κέρδει καὶ σοϕία δέδεται, 54, is generalizing), much as Theocritus, a contemporary of Posidippus, would do at the conclusion of Idyll 11, albeit in a more playful jest addressed to the physician Nicias.Footnote ²⁵ We may pause then to consider how Medeus fits this description. We have seen that Medeus’ own ambition is great and so, too, must have been the wealth amassed by such a prominent member of the Ptolemaic court.Footnote ²⁶ The bronze statue alone is a mark of his wealth and potentially also his interest in conspicuous consumption; moreover, the statue is dedicated boldly as ‘proof of his skill’ (ἑῆς γνωρίσματα τέχνης, AB 95.7), not in praise of the god.Footnote ²⁷ In fact, Medeus does not really offer the gods their due; recognition of ‘his own’ skill is not much of a dedication. The other epigrams full of sacrifice and prayer read like a rebuke, and it is tempting to understand ‘Antichares’ in the poem that immediately follows AB 95 as a speaking name that emphasizes the importance of χάρις and its reciprocity (ἀντί) between man and god, especially since speaking names are a feature of the Epidaurian iamata (e.g. Ἄπιστος, the name given to a man who does not believe in Asclepius’ cures, IG IV² I 121.31–33).Footnote ²⁸

Perhaps it is entirely fitting then that Medeus dedicates his statue, bound as it is to the only instance of typically fatal ailments in the iamatika, to a god other than Asclepius, especially inasmuch as Medeus’ actions are uncharacteristic of Asclepius who learned to curb his own excessive behaviour. There may well be a hint of irony, too, in the fact that Medeus’ claim to fame is treating snakebites, given the salutary role of snakes (albeit not asps) in Asclepius’ cult. The serpent is a key element of Asclepius’ iconographic trademark, curled always around the god's staff, and snakes took active part in temple cures.Footnote ²⁹ To cite but one example recorded in the iamata from Epidaurus: a girl with a growth (ϕῦμα) on her hand was cured when a viper (ἔχις) opened the growth, presumably with its teeth (IG IV² 1 123.4–8); that is, she was cured by the bite of a snake – and even a typically poisonous one.Footnote ³⁰

In many ways Medeus is a foil for Asclepius within the iamatika. The first epigram certainly invites comparison of the two: Medeus, himself a healer and more particularly an Asclepiad, opens a series of poems that focus thereafter on Asclepius. But Medeus’ epigram makes a relatively lengthy and ostentatious (inscribed on or near a bronze statue) statement about his ability to do what Asclepius never does: treat typically fatal ailments and restore to health those about to die. His primary contribution to medicine, moreover, centres on a cure for the bite of creatures who, in less lethal manifestations, are ubiquitous symbols and agents of Asclepius’ cures. And so when we encounter finally in the last poem the exhortation towards moderation in wealth and potentially also in health, it is difficult not to think of Medeus whose prominent position in the Ptolemaic court and expensive dedication to Apollo Pythius imply that his wealth is less than moderate, and whose boasts indicate a less than modest view about his own healing abilities. This is not to say that I disagree with Bing's suggestion that the exhortation aims also at those who seek quick fixes and cure-alls from the gods; rather, I see Medeus as a sort of healer who is just as guilty of immoderation.Footnote ³¹

In supposing that the collection was edited in such a way as to be critical of Medeus, we need not assume thereby that Posidippus was concerned about moralizing or issuing subtle warnings when he composed the epigram for the statue. The meanings and allusions that I am suggesting for AB 95 are evident only when the poem is read within the collection of iamatika as presented in the Milan papyrus: that is, as the first of a sequence that continues with Asclepius’ own healing and concludes with a warning about excess. The Milan papyrus becomes an excellent example of how various publication contexts of the same poem can affect interpretation, and of how an editor, by choosing which poems to include and how to arrange them, can give works new meaning each time he designs a bookroll. It is unfortunate that we do not know who was responsible for editing the poems as we have them on the Milan papyrus.

If the editor was Posidippus – which is by no means certain – the reading posed here opens interesting avenues of interpretation on to Hellenistic court poetry inasmuch as the warning is directed toward a fellow member of Ptolemy's entourage and thus suggests a much more nuanced relationship between Posidippus and the Ptolemaic elite than has been explored heretofore. We might even understand the connection between moderation in wealth on the one hand and good health on the other as targeted at Ptolemaic extravagance more generally and promotion of the tryphe lifestyle, especially if we recall that Pythian 3, on which the message of the iamatika seems to draw, is addressed to a ruler, Hieron of Syracuse.Footnote ³² In other words, not all of Posidippus’ court poetry may be straightforward in its praise, at least not when it takes on new meaning in secondary publication, as I am suggesting this poem has done. This in turn may have implications for our understanding of the social role of the epigrammatist and the kinds of literature his audience would have tolerated or enjoyed.Footnote ³³ Of course, absent better knowledge about context, these observations are but speculation.