Medicine and Empire in the Roman World

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-521-69275-5
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 278 Seiten

Reihe: Key Themes in Ancient History

This book explores relations between medicine and empire in the Roman world. It charts Rome's accumulation of medical resources in the Republic, bound up with the acquisition of territory and power, and then reveals the redistribution of those resources as part of the larger project of imperial consolidation after Augustus. It demonstrates the ways in which medicine – ideas and practices around health, disease and healing – supported the Roman imperial enterprise. From the medical care of large enslaved workforces and Roman armies to the hierarchies of medical practitioners in communities across the empire and the ordering of health and bodies. Rome was the medical and political capital of the Mediterranean. It was also the disease capital, and the integration of imperial territory by the second century CE not only established a unified (but not uniform) medical culture but also helped the spread of disease, culminating in the Antonine Plague.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Flemming, Rebecca

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: medicine and empire; Part I: 1. Medicine and empire in the Roman Republic; 2. Medicine and empire from the Republic into the Principate; 3. Medicine and empire from Trajan to Alexander Severus; Part II: 4. An imperial medical culture; 5. Healing and divinity: The imperial system; 6. Plagues, pandemics and empire; 7. Medicine, empire and disease; 8. Medicine, empire and race; Conclusions: medicine and empire in the Roman world; Bibliographical essay; Appendix 1. Key medical authors and texts: a brief (chronological) guide.

Über Autor(innen)

Flemming, Rebecca
REBECCA FLEMMING is the inaugural A.G. Leventis Professor of Ancient Greek Scientific and Technological Thought at the University of Exeter. Author of numerous items focused on ancient medicine, she is also co-editor of the broader volume Reproduction: From Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge, 2018).