RE-AIR: Conversations: The Intersection of Magic & Medicine, Women as Medica in the Ancient World w/ Dr. Christie Vogler

This episode originally aired in March of 2022. Liv was joined by Dr Christie Vogler who talks about women of the Roman world who practiced medicine, in varied forms, and how these women were seen and understood in the wider Roman world. Follow Christie on Twitter https://twitter.com/cmvogue?s=21 and check out her podcast, Movies We Dig https://www.movieswedig.com/ (where Liv has been a three time guest!). Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com grouptrip.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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• 1:13Speaker 02

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• 2:18Liv Albert?

  Hi, hello nerds, ugh, nerds. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am that host of yours. She who partakes in these conversation episodes by repeatedly and unendingly using the phrase "that's fascinating", because truly in the moment, that's all that comes to me as I take in the information, because it is fascinating. Yes, I say this because I am particularly guilty of this in the episode I'm about to share with you. But also, I say this because I saw a review recently that irked me, said I had bad interview style. And honestly, I won't deny that. I never set out to be an interviewer in this podcast.

• 3:00Liv Albert?

  I kind of fell into having these conversations and just figured it out as I went along. I don't consider myself an interviewer. That's why I call these episodes "conversations". We're having a conversation about the ancient world and the guest's topic of expertise. I honestly treat these as an opportunity for the guest to just tell me any and everything they know and want to share. I add my two cents, yes, but that's the intention with them. I get to learn, you get to learn, and these amazing academics who want their work shared beyond hundred-dollar textbooks and paywalls get to share it. It's the fucking dream. I suppose I don't have a point here, I just wanted to voice it because it's how I feel about these episodes. I love them so fucking much.

• 3:43Liv Albert?

  Which means, enough of that talk, let me tell you about today's episode and guest. I spoke with Dr. Christie Vogler, host of the podcast Movies We Dig, and archaeologist, and all my fucking gods did Christy blow my mind. Today's episode is about women in the ancient world, particularly the Roman world, practicing medicine. Medicine! Women practicing medicine and being seen as witches, stigmas associated with it, enslaved women gaining rights and freedoms by learning medicine. Oh, man, truly, utterly, incredibly fascinating, as I will say in this episode many times. I just love these episodes so much.

• 4:26Liv Albert?

  Learning such incredible things about ancient people, ancient women in particular, the ways they existed and thrived within the strictures of the patriarchy of even ancient Rome, which is worse. Just so incredible. It's perfect for the first Friday after International Women's Day, but also just this Women's History Month. Let's talk about them. And speaking of, enough of me talking.

• 5:07Liv Albert?

  Conversations: The Intersection of Magic and Medicine. Women as Medicare in the Ancient World with Dr. Kristy Vogler.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  So generally speaking, I am a, I call myself, an ancient Mediterranean archaeologist, particularly interested in gender. And my dissertation eventually started getting me to look at the role that women had in ancient medicine.

• 5:46Liv Albert?

  Which is so cool.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Random things we found, and I sent you some pictures at Ganja Vecchio where we're finding things like sex scenes on lamps. And then the, the one that I obsess about in my dissertation, and I've done a lot of work on, is a scene of a woman lowering herself on what, we initially pulled it out of the ground, and was like, well, that's a painful dildo situation right there. And like, that just kind of shows how androcentric a lot of archaeology can be sometimes, that like, even as a woman in the field, I automatically read this as another sex scene. And it took another friend of mine to look at the image. Wow, I'm gonna go so off track.

• 6:27Liv Albert?

  I love it.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  And it took another woman to be like, well, maybe that's, it is painful, but maybe because it's childbirth. And it never occurred to us, because you don't see a lot of images, or at least, I'm starting to think, a lot more images of real childbirth existed in the ancient world, but for a long time, they weren't being identified and published. So.

• 6:51Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  That paired with these objects that also, there's hairpins that women would wear and one is like a carved hand holding a palm and granite, which is an allusion to Persephone, as well as that tiny little Venus figurine, that I absolutely love that piece. There's all of these images that women would use on what we call mundus malibri, objects they decorate themselves with, that related to female fertility in particular. And then we found medical tools in this like same area. And they're specialized medical tools, so they would have been used for bone surgery and things like that.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  So the combination of this huge emphasis on female sexuality with practical tools of healing made me want to investigate the idea of there's a woman practicing medicine here, which we know exists, we see records of it in epigraphy. And like this poem I'll read later, that Auzanias writes about his aunt, that women did practice medicine, but like most of the time, if you see medical tools, we're so conditioned to identify that as relating to a male profession. So that was my research at Ganja Vecchio, that's how I kind of really got into this focus. I'm currently an assistant professor, I always mix up assistant and associate.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  I'm an assistant professor at University of Lynchburg with the History Department. And I am also a podcaster, like you mentioned. I joined two colleagues for Movies We Dig, where we love looking at modern reception of the ancient world in movies, film. We're doing video games and we just did our first musical Hadestown last week. So it's, it's been really fun to geek out in that format and. Yeah, that's kind of where I am right now and what I've been doing.

• 8:50Liv Albert?

  That's super fun. Absolutely want to hear about women practicing medicine.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so as I was working on the childbirth scene on the lamp, I randomly came across the wall fresco from Pompeii, and I sent you a picture of that one as well, of this beautiful scene from the Aeneid, where Aeneas has been injured and there is a surgeon, and he's named Iaxx, and he is trying to pull the arrowhead out of the thigh of Aeneas. And in the background, you see his mother, Aphrodite, hovering in the background. She's actually holding Dittany in her hand because she is going to swoop in and actually be the one to cure her son because the surgery is failing.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  And, you know, I was, for my dissertation, I was really trying to imagine, if there is a female medical practitioner in this space, what does her interactions with her patients look like? Like, what is her relationship with them? And this was the first image I'd really seen that wasn't necessarily talking about women as a medical practitioner, but just women taking care of their children. And it was a, it was a role of Aphrodite that I'd never even thought about before because so rarely are the goddesses, other than maybe Demeter and Persephone, really shown caring for their children. So I found that, and then I went to the Aeneid.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  I sadly had not read the Aeneid. I still need to read.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  I probably should, but, but I went to the passage in Book 12, and I will not read it as nicely as you do, but it just opened my eyes even more to this idea of the two types of healing that existed in the world at the time that Virgil was writing. And so it says, "But the son of Isis, Iaxx, came. Apollo had loved him painfully but beyond all others, and gladly offered all his skills and powers, his lyre and prophecy, and his swift arrows. But to prolong his dying father's life, he chose to learn the properties of herbs and humble, unheroic arts of healing." Aeneas seethed in pain, propped on his huge spear among the warrior crowd with grieving

• 11:13Speaker 03

  eyeless, but their tears didn't move him. Old Iapix, his robe hitched up in the physician's manor, and you can actually see how his robes are hitched up in the fresco as well.

• 11:23Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  Made many anxious trials with herbs of phobus, applied with no results, and when he prodded the point or took it in his gripping force ups, no rout proved lucky and his patron god didn't come help. Across the plain, cruel horror swelled and disaster neared, dust filled the sky, horsemen came swooping in, and swarms of arrows reached the camp's heart. Grim shouts went heavenward as young men fought and died in ruthless battle. Venus, the mother, shaken by her child's pain, unfair, picked dittany in Cretan ida. This is an herb with trailing purple flowers and downy leaves, familiar to wild goats for browsing when they're wounded

• 12:07Speaker 03

  by an arrow. Venus veiled in a dark cloud, brought it down and steeped the secret remedy in water. A bright bowl held, she sprinkled in ambrosia and panacea and its pleasant fragrance. The moment old Iapix bathed the wound, the pain was gone, though he did not know why. The blood dried from the bottom of the lesion, the arrow yielded in his hand, unforced, it dropped out and the body's weakness vanished. Iapix took the lead, goaded the others. Why are you standing there? Quick, get his weapons. It was no human power, no skill of mine that saved your life, Aeneas. Someone greater than me is sending you to greater exploits.

• 12:46Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's so cool. Oh, my gosh.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:50Liv Albert?

  I love how explicit it is, too, that it's like this surgeon is calling on Apollo as he would because, you know, he's the god of medicine and but Apollo's not there. He's like, no, Apollo's not helping. Like, it is Venus.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yes. Like, there's, there's some really interesting things to unpack there about Iapix as a healer, too. Like, he, Apollo has offered him, you know, to be a great warrior, to have prophecy, or to have musical skills. And he's like, no, I care about my father and I want to take care of him. So those are the skills I want. And Virgil's coming out and saying it's unheroic what he chose. So there's, there is, interestingly enough, the Romans kind of have A resistance against medicine because it's seen as foreign. It came from the Greeks. So there, it's very interesting that that skill set is kind of skewed as, ah, it's not as good as other things you could have gotten from the god.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  And even so, he acknowledges like, hey, my skill isn't what saved Aeneas. It's some other unknown power that did it. And for me, it's Venus's love and care for her own child and her knowledge of pharmakia. That is what ultimately saves him. And to me, that was just such a great illustration of, you know, what scholars in medical anthropology say, medical pluralism, where you have surgery, you have biomedicine, this kind of rational science, and then you have this more natural form of healing, often associated with women and often associated with magic.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  I'll unpack a lot of it, but basically, this gendered idea of health becomes more and more pronounced. It's not really there with the Greeks, but the Romans are really starting to define medicine as masculine and rational. And the kind of healing that women practice is quickly being skewed as magical and therefore dangerous.

• 14:52Liv Albert?

  Huh.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Wow. Yeah.

• 14:56Liv Albert?

  That stuff happens so early. Like, what? That's amazing to me that it does. I mean, I just can't, you know, you think of witchcraft immediately. And I'm just shocked that that was so early, even in, I suppose, just pre-Christianity. I don't totally know what I'm saying here, but I would have just assumed that that came with Christianity, not for any, like, tangible reason that I could name, but.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was my assumption, too, that this kind of demonizing of homeopathic healing and medicine is something that would have come a little bit later. But it is interesting that we see in the second century BCE, there's kind of an anti-Hellenism movement that both Pliny and Cato kind of write about how they hate doctors and they think doctors are Dangerous because they're just out to get your money and possibly kill you. And it's much better. It used to be actually the role of the pater familias, the, the man of the house to take care of the household in that regard.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  And so we do see during the Roman Republic, we'll see some medical tools in villas. That would have been kind of like your first aid kit that the pater familias would have been in charge of. So as medicine is being introduced from the East, particularly from the Greeks, and that role of taking care of and healing your own household is kind of being given to other people that you see as less than you. There was a big pushback from it, interestingly enough. At the same time, what I have really loved about studying medicine is that it's one of the few professions that women in the ancient world could do that still met gender norms,

• 16:42Speaker 03

  where the expectation of women are caring, they take care of the family, and they could actually make money off of it, to the point that they could be economically independent, which is also probably why women practicing medicine became more and more skewed as witchcraft and dangerous.

• 16:58Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:01Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting. I mean, and just like, I mean, the fascinating of women getting a role like that and being allowed to do something like that. But then also the inherent like, well, I mean, they're allowed, but it's also still going to come with trouble because, because it's women doing things.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And it, it goes back to this problem we still have today where work that is often gendered as female is less valued economically. So we see this even with the types of jobs that slave women would have, where it's mostly service jobs, doing hair.

• 17:38Liv Albert?

  Like cleaning, I'm assuming, stuff like the household things.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  And most women couldn't earn money that way to even buy their freedom. It was pretty rare. But we do have instances and there's records of how the value of a slave goes up if they have medical training and knowledge.

• 17:58Liv Albert?

  Huh.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  And it wasn't just limited to males or females. So a woman could, in that regard, actually earn her freedom through an income. And we see, especially in the Western part of the Roman world at this point, that most female practitioners were of either slave status or former slave status, or they were the children of freedwomen, which is just really cool to see how eventually this skill that got someone out of slavery is being passed on to their children.

• 18:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's, that's incredible. And I don't even, I don't have full thoughts to think about it because I'm just taking it all.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  It's all good.

• 18:37Liv Albert?

  All I can think about, and we'll see how much this fits, but have you read The Wolf Den?

• 18:43Speaker 03

  No.

• 18:43Liv Albert?

  The book from last year. It's a novel from last year by Elodie Harper, and it's about an enslaved woman in a brothel, brothel in Pompeii. And it's so good. So just generally recommend it anyway. But it's now kind of my whole, because I don't spend a lot of time in Rome. It's kind of my whole, like, knowledge point, other than like Star's Spartacus series for Rome. So it's sort of like taking everything in it in that respect. But yeah, that's, that's just fascinating. And the idea that, that it was, like, of course, I suppose it was harder for women to, to buy themselves out of slavery. But then this thing that they could do that is, I mean, highly skilled, just generally speaking, let alone

• 19:28Liv Albert?

  how they actually valued it as, as being highly skilled. That's, it's sort of refreshing and lovely to think that that kind of, at least some, one thing existed that they could train themselves in that could possibly get them out, or just a different kind of status.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then, like, the question I became really interested that in, because this is a trade of sorts, is if you had, so for instance, at Pompeii,

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Ria Berg has done some research of a pair of medical tools found in one of the houses there, and she's identified one that actually has a person's name written on the tool, and it's Sporata, and she makes an argument that this is a slave woman's name. And it starts to become the question of like, all right, if this is a slave woman, what is her relationship with the different patients she would have in the house? Like, what is her relationship with the domina and the pater familias? Like, how does she balance care for them versus care for slaves? Especially like if slaves are coming to her for pharmakia that would allow them to have an abortion, because they don't want a child born into slavery?

• 20:37Speaker 03

  And how do you balance the expectations of both sides and navigate that?

• 20:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Which, to me, is the most interesting questions you can ask about the lived realities that these women had that never get commented upon in the literature we see a lot of the time.

• 20:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I imagine nobody was writing that kind of thing down.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  And I think that's why I like, the other reason I like this moment in the Aeneid so much is, you know, there's a big debate about going to Greek and Roman literature, predominantly written by wealthy, literate men of the time, and like, how much can you actually learn about women's lives from their point of view? And, you know, arguably, there's a lot here that it's definitely a skewed view. But like, that instance, like, all of a sudden, you think Virgil is thinking about his own mother taking care of him, or these stories passed on, if you go back to Homer, like, who survived the fall of Troy?

• 21:44Speaker 03

  It was mostly women who were enslaved, and they're the ones who desperately want to tell the stories of what happened. And so how do those little glimmers of what women experience actually make into? The literature itself and trying to pick those out is really exciting for me if I can find the physical evidence to go with it.

• 22:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah, because I suppose physical, physical evidence would be like all there is because there is no, no written evidence.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:14Liv Albert?

  It's also so much less like subjective, I guess, too, right? I mean, I'm constantly on the podcast just questioning, you know, the motives and, and what they wrote down and why and what survives and why. And so, yeah, when you have these like actual, physical evidence, it's so much more clear about what is actually being. I mean, certainly not all the time, I'm sure, but like, in terms of the, the objective power of it, whether you can understand it is probably a different question.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. And like I said, with the, the very first lamp fragment where like my automatic reading of it was very androcentric because that's just how a lot of archaeology has been for a long time anyway. So eventually you just have to learn to ask the other questions of like, well, wait, the physical stuff, obviously were used by women and women have a presence here. And like, we don't have to just go with based off what the men were saying about them. Like, we can reimagine. And another really good example, I forget her, the name of the researcher, but she gave the example of, um, looking at cosmetic tools. And if you find those in spaces, because men are so against women putting on makeup

• 23:26Speaker 03

  in the ancient world, like you're supposed to, you know, have a natural beauty. Um, and it's never good to be augmenting it in any way. And even Ovid, who is trying to be a little bit more judicious, like, yeah, I love a beautiful face, but then he says things like, but I don't want to see you put it on, like, you don't want to see it. And so what's really cool then is like, all right, I've found a space where I'm finding those cosmetic tools and all of these men keep saying, we have nothing to do with that. Then I can imagine this as a space controlled by a woman. That's, that's really cool to think about. So sometimes the men give us more clues than we realize and we just have to kind of think

• 24:09Speaker 03

  in reverse sometimes. They're like, okay, if you're saying you don't have anything to do with that, can I assume women do have something to do with it then?

• 24:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's so interesting.

• 24:21Liv Albert?

  I had no idea about that when it comes to makeup. To me, it feels like they're angry about some kind of like trickery, which is so modern now, too, right? Of like, it's, it's just like something that hasn't gone away, or it's come back, or what have you. But that doesn't sound unfamiliar.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Not at all. And it's, it's kind of interesting because like, there is an expectation of maintaining cultists, like maintaining a good appearance even for men. But it's, it's again, supposed to look natural. And I always think of going to Sephora and how you have like, um, skincare section, and then you have the fun eyeshadow section. And how like, even those are still separated from each other, of an understanding of how you appear.

• 25:07Liv Albert?

  Well, that and like, you know, even today, how common it is to, okay, here's all the makeup you need for a quote unquote, natural look. And it's like a trillion different things, but it's supposed to make it look like you're not wearing any makeup at all. And I mean, you know, admittedly, I like, I put on makeup most days and it's makeup that's like barely anything, but it's like my, the thing I put on every day, even if it's not meant to, it's not crazy eyeshadow, it's not obvious, anything. And yet it's this totally like normal thing for me. It's, yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:40Liv Albert?

  Do we know anything about whether they did that? Like makeup that wasn't supposed to look like makeup?

• 25:45Speaker 03

  Um, I, in terms of, so I'm not as specialized in cosmetics in particular, but they're definitely, and a lot of it's lead based, unfortunately.

• 25:54Liv Albert?

  Oh, lovely.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  But trying, they're still trying to do natural things, like make your cheeks rosy, putting a color on your lips. I know like Cole was known for the eye and things like that. What I do know, going back to like more objects, is that along with cosmetics, women were not supposed to appear gaudy with all the jewelry and stuff. But what's interesting about jewelry is that was sometimes a woman's only disposable income. And

• 26:25Speaker 03

  So it was really important to have. So one way that women subvert this idea of like, you shouldn't be wearing gaudy jewelry is that they repurpose the jewelry to promote fertility, because of course men want them to have legitimate children. So you get the hand holding the pomegranate as a hairpin. You get armbands of snakes, which are also believed to promote fertility and things like that, made of gold that women wear. So they're like, okay, you say I can't have jewelry, but as long as like it's helping me have children, you're okay with it. And that's kind of how they subvert these ideas and they still get

• 27:05Speaker 03

  to have a disposable income and dress up the way they want to, which I think is so cool.

• 27:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's such a clearly intentional, it's, I mean, it's just sort of a brilliant way of getting around that kind of social expectation. Also, I really want a hairpin of a hand holding a pomegranate. Like, that sounds gorgeous.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we've, we've found multiple hairpins like that at Gangevecchio is the place I work at in Sicily. And I've seen similar ones, not at the British Museum. If you, if you go to London, go to the museum, the London Museum, which actually has artifacts from the Roman colony of Londinium. One of my favorite parts was they had recreated like a woman's, a woman's vanity table that they've laid out with like her jewelry and her hairpins and the cosmetic tools she would use. And I just loved the recreation of that. So, and again, it's like, if, if we find these artifacts in a room then, and we see them all together, and it's like, yeah, let's think about the space that she was inhabiting, what she was

• 28:10Speaker 03

  doing there and how that room in particular would have been under her control to some extent.

• 28:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah, like her space in a way that probably very little else is.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  I I just love all of these little things about how how are women making themselves known in history there, but they they can't be flashy about it. Aphrodite can't come out and say like, step aside, I'm going to take care of my son. They have to kind of still be in the background and just get by as best they can.

• 28:43Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting to me, particularly how you phrased it too, because I think so. One thing that fascinates me lately is Aeneas, but in the Iliad, because to me, he kind of stands out in a way that basically only Achilles does, but he also doesn't have a ton of story attached to him. So he's like this minor character who's also obviously super important. And I'm just so curious what that meant back then, like to the Greeks, not the Romans, because Romans clearly picked up on it and they made him into this thing, but he was something before. And anyway, I could, I would love to know more about Aeneas, specifically Greek, because it's, he's like in not in anything except the Homeric hymn.

• 29:24Liv Albert?

  And anyway, my point is that in the Iliad, she kind of does save him in this incredibly obvious way. Like she literally whisks him off the battlefield, like just like she does with Paris, like saves his ass in a super obvious, like I am a goddess, this is my son, I'm going to save him kind of way, where to me, it kind of speaks to the differences between, you know, at least, you know, the archaic period or or before of Greece versus Rome. And like Greek women didn't have a ton of abilities, but I think that the goddesses maybe were able to like at least be a little something more than they were in Rome. I don't know how true that is, but it's so different, the two.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:11Liv Albert?

  Or instances of it.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Well, and so there was a really, I have to look up because it was a big help for. The paper I'm working on and everything. So Barbara Stanley Spath has a book chapter called "From Goddess to Hag: The Greek and Roman Witch in Classical Literature."

• 30:28Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God. Okay.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, highly recommend. It's a great read. And

• 30:34Liv Albert?

  What a good title.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  I know. And she does a wonderful job of just looking at how witches are represented in literature and how that starts to change over time, specifically like how the Greeks are perceiving witches, how that starts to become more defined in the Hellenistic period, and then the Romans get a hold of it. And, oh, boy, that's where we get evil witches that we think about today. And what she suggests is that characters like Medica and Kierke or Cersei, or however you say it.

• 31:12Liv Albert?

  I know. I say Cersei, but I know it's Kierke.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  So they are presented as being in like the mythological past, like so many of these individuals are like, you can say they existed in a time, you know, the age of heroes, but now we're in the Iron Age, and this period sucks, according to Hesiod. But

• 31:34Liv Albert?

  Everything sucked, according to him.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  So they're in the past, and therefore their powers and what they do, they're not heavily described, and they're not, they're not bad, they're not evil in tension, they can use their powers to protect men that they're trying to sleep with, or, and only if you get on their bad side, like many gods, will they use their powers to harm you. And so they're much more neutral or mixed bag sort of a thing. But eventually, in the Hellenistic period, and this is the thing that Stanley Spath didn't notice, because she was trying to understand, why do we have this drastic change happening? And what I'm seeing is that it has to do with the development of rational medicine that came about with the

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Hippocratic Corpus in the 5th century, where we now have a class of men who are trying to define what healthcare looks like. And the best way to define what a profession looks like is to say what it is not.

• 32:34Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  And what it is not is what women do, is what it really comes to be. And so you have in the Hellenistic period when Hippocratic medicine is being developed even further in Alexandria. That's eventually where Galen ends up and does a ton of surgeries and writing. In the, oh, I'm blinking on dates all of a sudden. I think he's first or second century CE.

• 32:59Liv Albert?

  I would have no way of knowing, so we're just gonna trust your right. Don't worry.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  I have him written down somewhere, but there's 15 pages to get through and I'm not searching right now.

• 33:08Liv Albert?

  It's fine. Someone can Google.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so Galen is someone who really codifies the Hippocratic corpus as we know it today. And he, he was actually very angry when people associated, like, would call him a sorcerer and stuff. He's like, no, that is not what I do. I do rational medicine. This is what rational medicine is. As we see this development of the witch being more defined in like who she worships, the type of rituals she does, and her intentions turn from like neutral or helpful to like just out and out evil. That parallels how medicine is being defined as like the correct way to maintain health.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  It ends up being gendered as a result because Stanley Space sees that male sorcerers are still being represented as like seekers of knowledge and their powers are being used to help. And the only time that males, magicians or sorcerers are talked about negatively is when they're being, being considered charlatans. And charlatans is the same category used by medical professionals to say like, that is not the correct way to practice medicine.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  And so male magicians kind of are in this center space. They, they don't get talked about too badly, but then if you add on this extra layer of gender, it becomes very easy. Just like medicine is ma- male and rational.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  Anything else is irrational and women and dangerous.

• 34:45Liv Albert?

  I, I mean, I love that.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:47Liv Albert?

  I mean, obviously it's so dark, but also I'm just like, well, yeah, whatever dudes like, I'll take it. Like I'm pulling a day on them and just like.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's very interesting because like Stanley Speth is talking about how, again, these, what these elite men are writing about witches is like, there probably are female magical practitioners as well. Um, but would they have considered themselves healers? Or would they have called themselves a witch? Or would they have identified in some other way? We won't really know for sure because their practices are just being

• 35:26Speaker 03

  put to one extreme of like, this is, all they do is magic, but that's not all these women do. Um, archaeologically, we see that many medical practitioners, male and female, are using things like charms, are using incantations, are using things that would, we would identify as magic because it put their clients at ease to have both this rational, natural explanation of illness, but to also hearken to the gods or hearken to a higher power to take care of them, which is something we still have today. It hasn't gone away.

• 36:03Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Um, and I think, so the other texts end up referencing a lot is, uh, Vivian Newton. I don't know how to say her last name for sure. She has a book on ancient medicine and she just talks about, it's like, we have this very skewed perception, perception of what medicine is because we have these men writing about what they say it is. But if we reverse that and look at patients, they're the ones who truly decide who is a doctor, who is a healer, because they pay for the services. And if they don't like what someone is doing, they will go to someone else.

• 36:38Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  And what is very interesting is eventually Hippocratic medicine, we have all of that today because during the medieval Islamic period, those same elite men were taking the Greek stuff and incorporating into their healing practices. But what is interesting is that instead of identifying doctors versus witches, they just come out and say, why are patients going to women who are uneducated? And using like spells and random potions to treat people effectively?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Because they acknowledge like these women are curing patients and basically taking away income from themselves. So by the medieval period, they've kind of gotten rid of witch and they just realized that women are major competition for them. And so they're just trying to say like, hey, they're not educated, they're not trained, they are not going to be the best option for you. And yet their writing tells us that, but people go to them all the time because that's your mother, that's your aunt, that is someone you grew up around your whole life and they have taken care of you. Why would you go to a stranger and pay them to heal you when someone else already takes care of you?

• 38:00Liv Albert?

  Uh huh. And when it's been, it's worked. So yeah, like why go somewhere else?

• 38:06Speaker 03

  That's, that's my favorite part is like, uh, we have some different writings from these medical doctors who are like, it worked, but it only worked because the patient came to me first, didn't give the, like, didn't, didn't give my cure long enough to actually work. And then they went to the woman and it got cured.

• 38:24Liv Albert?

  Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That checks out.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  And so it's like, I kind of, again, sometimes I just appreciate what men are, are writing and not realizing what they're saying sometimes.

• 38:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah. They're giving themselves away.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  They are, yeah.

• 38:38Liv Albert?

  It's even just using that phrase, I just think of that again, still happening today. Like, the way people or the way men give themselves away, like, half the time that they're complaining about anything. And you're like, you've literally just told on yourself. You've just explained through your complaint why your complaint is invalid.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  I read, am I the asshole a little too often?

• 39:01Liv Albert?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Just like, that is basically what reading some of these documents is like sometimes.

• 39:07Liv Albert?

  It's, it's most of my bad reviews is men telling on themselves. So that's like, all I can think of is just the way it's like, it's like, just tell the myths. We don't need to know if the women were being assaulted all the time. Just, just tell the myths. And I'm like, well, okay, but those are the myths. So like, go away or stop complaining.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I, so I, I'm teaching a history course right now. And I actually love starting with the Iliad because as an archaeologist, I am highly aware of the fact that human history expands far beyond what was written down. And Homer's a great place to start because there are some factual elements we found archaeologically in the story. And so we start to question like historical accounts being from an oral tradition versus written down. And, you know, I try to have my students investigate, you know, which is the better way to pass on information. And those students will point to like the telephone game and how things change over time. And then I'm like, all right, how many of you know ancient Greek?

• 40:13Speaker 03

  How many of you have translated ancient Greek? And I'm able to show them, I have fagels and then they read an abridged version of the Iliad by Lombardo. And so I just pull two lines translated by these two different men into English. And it's like, what information is lost between one translation and the other? Because one is much more simplified. And then also what choices are these men as translators making? So they call the woman, it's where Patroclus is ordering some women to go and fetch.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Some betting for Phoenix who is visiting and Fagels uses the term serving women. It's like, but who are these women in a Greek camp really?

• 41:01Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. They're not choosing to serve anyone.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so even when we say written is the better format of passing on information for long periods of time, it's like, we still actively make choices about how we're representing people of the past that isn't authentic to their lived experience.

• 41:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah. What I've been thinking about lately is like, what versions of Homeric epic existed before they got written down, right? Like, because if it's true that, one of my recent guests told me that, you know, it was probably written down in like, what, like fifth, sixth century Athens or something? And it's like, I mean, that's so late in terms of how long it was probably being sung all over the Greek world. And like, yeah, what, what versions were there? What different details do we not have, even when it comes to the two sources that we have, you know, quote unquote, in full compared to like, everything else that we have so fragmentary?

• 42:03Liv Albert?

  And it's just, I mean, I say it every time, but I, what I wouldn't give for a time machine to just go back, just listen to these people and read everything, but also listen to them.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Well, and like, I think Pat Barker's book Silence of the Girls, like she has this moment, she takes that moment again from Homer where Bruceus is taking this opportunity at Patroclus's funeral to mourn her brothers who have been killed by the Greeks because she has not been allowed the space to do so beforehand because she will be punished for doing so. And to me, like, that little caveat.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Of the story is probably something women were actually, again, the major survivors of these conflicts. That's the kind of stuff they would pass down to their kids and be like, this is what I had to do to survive. And like every once in a while, I think that does appear in our written texts, but like you have to really go looking for it.

• 43:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and then meanwhile, we get all the explanations that like, no, Patroclus was probably nice enough to perseus that she, you know, like she still mourned his death. And it's like, I mean, I find it unlikely, even for all the Patroclus of him. Like, I don't think she was mourning his death.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  Probably not. No.

• 43:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, he could be the least evil of the Greeks, but he's still one of the Greeks enslaving her.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's like, maybe as an ally. So your life, you like, you know, your life could be worse. And it's like, there went my best opportunity for the best slave life I could hope for, which is not great.

• 43:35Liv Albert?

  But even then, it's like, you're mourning your life. You're not mourning Patroclus.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

• 43:46Liv Albert?

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• 44:28Liv Albert?

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• 45:12Liv Albert?

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• 45:32Speaker 01

  Hi folks. It's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. The new Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County is coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus November 12. Jen Affleck leads a new group of women with the hope of forming a sense of community, but moral divides threaten to tear the group apart. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County on November 12. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 46:01Speaker 02

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• 46:56Speaker 03

  I guess I'll bring it back because I have two more stories to share, basically, that the Romans are telling to help. And so my question is like, going to that original story, women were identified as medica. Like, they earned this title that was recognized by rational medicine. So what, who was considered an acceptable medica in this Roman world where they were anti-Greekness, anti-women, being independent, economically independent. But like, there had to be exceptions, and there appears to be a couple of exceptions. So the story that I came across, and I had not realized was, oh, hang on, I have to have

• 47:39Speaker 03

  versions everywhere, is, comes from Hyginus. So Hyginus has a bunch of fables, and the story of Agnotike of Athens comes from that. And she's actually included with this passage of inventors and their inventions. And what I kind of love about it is that her story takes up about a third of this section. Otherwise, it's a bunch of other names that, like Daedalus is listed, for instance. And this is what Hyginus, who dates to the 2nd century CE, this is what he writes about Agnotike. "The ancients didn't have obstetricians,

• 48:20Speaker 03

  and as a result, women, because of modesty, perished. For the Athenians forbade slaves and women to learn the art of medicine. A certain girl, Agnotike, a virgin, desired to learn medicine, and since she desired it, she cut her hair, and in male attire, came to a certain Herophilus for training. When she had learned the art and had heard that a woman was in labor, she came to her. And when the woman refused to trust herself to her, thinking that she was a man, she removed her garment to show that she was a woman, and in this way, she traded, she treated women." When the doctors saw that they were not admitted to women, they began to accuse Agnadeki, saying that she was a seducer and corrupter of women,

• 49:03Speaker 03

  and that the women were pretending to be ill. The Ero Pagites in session started to condemn Agnadeki, but Agnadeki removed her garment for them and showed that she was a woman. Then the doctors began to accuse her more vigorously, and as a result, the leading women came to the court and said, "You are not husbands, but enemies, because you condemn her who discovered safety for us." Then the Athenians amended the law so that free-born women could learn the art of medicine.

• 49:34Liv Albert?

  Holy shit.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  Right?

• 49:36Liv Albert?

  I've only ever heard that name before, and I don't think I've ever actually found the source on it. So I'm just so thrilled with that. I feel like, and maybe I'm just totally misremembering, but I feel like when that story is usually referenced, it's not about her practicing medicine? I don't know. All I can think of is just like, yeah, the woman who flashed all of the people in Greece. But I always feel like it makes her seem like that's not why. And now I just can't remember what it is, but that's so incredible.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's interesting. So I looked up the name Hierophilus, trying to figure out if there was something about the etymology of the name that indicated he was a doctor. That is an actual practitioner of Hippocratic medicine that is well-known as being one of the first surgeons in Alexandria and everything.

• 50:29Liv Albert?

  Huh.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  And he's not from Athens, but you can tell this is a Roman writing. You know, this is, what, 700 years after the Hippocratic corpus was developed? And he's just like, "All right, obviously, a woman in Athens would have to learn from a very educated man. What is the oldest name I know?" And that's where she learned medicine from. So it was so real, it was so interesting to see like this real name thrown out there, but there's no indication Heraphylus was ever in Athens at all to legitimize her abilities as a medical practitioner. And it's interesting that initially she is acting as like an obstetrician

• 51:10Speaker 03

  or even in the midwife role, but it quickly talks about like women, the doctors of the city are accusing women of pretending to be ill. So she's probably handling other illnesses.

• 51:22Liv Albert?

  Like they're going to her for everything because they hear about her and they're like, well, hell yeah, like I want this woman treating me.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:28Liv Albert?

  Especially in Athens.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  Well, and we see this again in medieval Islamic medicine too. Like a lot of cases, male doctors will write about how they, depending on their female patients, won't necessarily get to see them. It will have to be a woman who comes and performs all the tasks that the doctor would do. And so it's like this idea of modesty really does drive the need for women to be in this space and helping each other. And that's kind of present here. So what I get from this story eventually is that ideally what Romans want for their medica to be in this fable is that they are educated by men or educated in the way of

• 52:11Speaker 03

  men. They are virginal. And by the end of this, which I, I don't believe this is true, but he states that only free born women could learn medicine, not slaves. But we know in the Roman world, a lot of slaves were even more highly valued as slaves for their medical knowledge. So it's a very interesting, like we're starting to get a definition of, all right, if she's not a witch, then she has to be this if we're going to call her a medica, call her a doctor. All right, so Amelia Hilaria is a Gallic Roman woman,

• 52:49Speaker 03

  and she, her nephew, Alceneus, kind of records this epithet to her in a way. I don't think epithet's the right word, but basically is remembering her life after she has passed in his work Parentalia, where he kind of goes through, he has these poems he writes for all of his relatives. And this is the one that I kind of like, ugh, a little bit as I read it. But it really, she, she's kind of the prime example of what men found acceptable in Medica. Like, it's like, if she's going to be a Medica, she has to be this. Otherwise, she's a witch, she's dangerous, and like, we don't want anything to do with her.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  So, the title for her poem is Amelia Hilaria, My Mother's Sister, An Avowed Virgin. "You two, who threw in kinship's degree an aunt, were to me a mother, must now be recalled with a son's affection. Amelia, who in the cradle gained the second name of Hilaris," which here is translated as blivesum, or I almost like read it as accommodating kind of language. "Because, bright and cheerful, after the fashion of a boy, you made without pretense the very picture of a lad." And so I'm just imagining this like tomboyish figure, growing up, and it's being described with all these qualities of a young boy,

• 54:11Speaker 03

  and eventually, "based in the art of healing like a man." So eventually, she is trained in the art of healing as a man. And some people read this as like very sexist, just... But I think our general understanding now is that the rational kind of medicine that is being practiced at this point, because now we're in the 4th century CE, and magic and medicine have been very clearly defined as polar opposites of each other. This is the part that gets me. "You ever hated your female sex? So there grew up in you the love of consecrated maidenhood. Through three and sixty years, you maintained it, and your life's end was also a maiden's end." I don't like.

• 54:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's gross.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  It's gross, but if we ask some questions of it, there's some, there's something really cool there. Again, thinking about, okay, she's a medical practitioner, so she could be asexual. She could be a lesbian because virgin does not mean never had sex.

• 55:13Liv Albert?

  No, just not married.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  The other thing to consider is that with, like, we know that there are different types of herbs that were used in the ancient world to prevent pregnancy effectively. So she could have knowledge of this and be engaging in sexual relations with men and just never got pregnant. So you would never know. Or the other part, which also seems very realist, realistic is, seems to have grown up very independent and just realized that if like she wants to maintain that independence, she has to dedicate herself to her virginity. And there's something tied to medicine in that regard, too, where Aphrodite is,

• 55:57Speaker 03

  is a cult figure. And we see that, interestingly enough, like the cult of Asclepius is that arises and everything. That almost also legitizes, legitimizes medicine because part of what makes witches so dangerous, especially in the Roman period, is their ability to control natural phenomenon, which had belonged to the gods before. So there is some thought that witches have the ability to control gods. Which is problematic. And that's how charlatans are talked about is like people who go around saying like, they can make the gods do things that aren't natural. They're bad. That's not real medicine. And so when the cult of Asclepius also helps to really define medicine in this time,

• 56:42Speaker 03

  because you either practice medicine as part of the priesthood to Asclepius. And what's interesting is like Hippocrates and Galen both have claims to the cult of Asclepius. Interestingly enough, just to further legitimize the practice. So in this case, her choosing a virg, to be a virgin might relate to how priestesses at that time, especially the vestal virgins, also had to do that and maintain that to maintain the legitimacy of their practice.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  So there's a few different ways to interpret that, but

• 57:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  Apparently sixty-three years of being a virgin was the requirement to be a good medica.

• 57:19Liv Albert?

  God.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  And it ends, you cherished me with your press ups and your love as a might, as might a mother, and therefore, as a son, I make you this return at your last rites. And it really just brings back, like, he thought it was important to mention the medicine, but it's really the care of himself, like a mother would, that is what resonates with him. And I think that's what most of the women practicing medicine, or just healing arts of any kind, like, they were just people who cared about other people. Which I think is, you know, that's something we still desire in medicine today, is like, you don't want to just go to a very clean,

• 58:05Speaker 03

  quiet, white space and have someone ask you very basic questions and then be so clinical. You want them to care, because it's your health, it's your life. And I think that's why even today, there's such a huge pushback against what we call biomedicine, because it is so clinical and rational, and humans aren't that, humans have never been that, humans have gone to the gods and to the doctor to make themselves better. And if we continue to try and define the two fields as not connected, people are going to be turned off to biomedicine, as we've seen with COVID, as a result.

• 58:46Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting. I love the idea. It's interesting timing. I just, the episode I released today, at the time of this recording at least, was on Artemis, where I kind of fixed past things I'd said and clarified that virgin doesn't mean virgin, because I think I just hadn't really said anything before, and just used that word, because in my head, I know that that doesn't explicitly mean she'd never had sex. But yeah, that just like, because Artemis kind of represented that as well, in a way that, you know, just in the way that she had that freedom, like, she got it from Like day one, you know, according to that, the Calimachus hymn she got, she asked her father to keep her, you know, keep her maidenhood so that she could do whatever the hell she

• 59:30Liv Albert?

  wanted. And to me, it's like, that's just badass. She just was like, no, I don't want to get married. I want to have a complete, completely free life because I won't be under the thumb of my husband. And which is basically what this doctor did, you know? She was like, no, I'm going to not get married. I'm not going to have anyone else control me and I'm going to become a doctor. Like, that's amazing.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Hi, folks. It's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. The new Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County, is coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, November 12. Jen Affleck leads a new group of women with the hope of forming a sense of community, but moral divides threaten to tear the group apart. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County, on November 12. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

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• 1:00:57Speaker 02

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• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's interesting to see that those choices existed. Like, you didn't have to meet this expectation that we have set for like when you say Roman woman. It's like there's very limited roles that we imagined for them, but that was not the case. There, you had limited choices, but you still had choices. And to me, that's, that's so cool. So this is actually a really cool story as well, because this dedication is from the parents to a daughter. And we actually have the mother's name as well, and we learned that the mother was a freed woman. So she learned medicine and she passed it on to her daughter, Scantia.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  And the epigraph dedicated to her, to Scantia Redempta by her parents, reads that with Scantia's death, her husband all at once lost his wife, his own personal physician, and his principal source of revenue.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  And I'm like, that is a sick burn from some, some parents right there that I really appreciate.

• 1:02:58Liv Albert?

  That is so good.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  It's like, ah, just little things like that where it's like, not only were women in these roles, they were kicking ass in these roles. And like that family recognized like how amazing that skill was. And they appreciated it.

• 1:03:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's a good family. That's wonderful. Oh, my God.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  And it, you know, these are what we might think of today as like the working class families who aren't in the literature most of the time. So again, this perception of, all right, you have these rich literate men writing about what they think medicine is, but in practice and what people valued in people taking care of them probably differed greatly from what was, what we have preserved today in literature. So little, little things like that always just bring a smile to my face.

• 1:03:49Liv Albert?

  Absolutely, as they should. I mean, I am just, I'm generally so fascinated by what, yeah, what we don't know based on the literature. Because like you said, I mean, The stuff that gets written down is so deeply skewed.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:04Liv Albert?

  And let alone the stuff that gets kept, right? Like, it's not to say that that women weren't writing things down or that people sympathetic to women weren't writing things down.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:16Liv Albert?

  But in order for something that was written down to survive, it had to survive like, I mean, however, many hundreds or thousands of years of other people thinking this is worth me copying. Or this is worth me preserving in some way. It until you get to like the random things that have survived, like Sappho.

• 1:04:37Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:37Liv Albert?

  And that's because of just like the randomness of papyrus being able to survive, right?

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Yep. Yeah, and that's

• 1:04:45Liv Albert?

  It's so incredible.

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  That's why medicine is especially interesting to study because medicine, rich people in particular are interested in anything that is going to prolong their life. And so there's always been

• 1:04:57Liv Albert?

  Age old thing?

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's always been this investment in producing and reproducing medical knowledge. So that's why we have the Hippocratic Corpus, a lot of it from the fifth century, not all of it by any means. And then why Galen's writings and so many writings from that in medicine is preserved is because when it was being copied and translated in the medieval Islamic world, that was priority because these rich men wanted to live for a long time. And these are also the same men who were buying magic bowls and things like that with with spell inscriptions on the side. They're they're covering all of their bases.

• 1:05:38Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Which I I think is really cool, too. So the the one thing we do see of women's contribution to medical literature is when they are credited in the work above men for pharmacia. Like, so there are cures that are made with herbs and everything that if if Galen really liked that recipe and agrees that it works, he'll actually include it. And we do have a few names of women in that regard. But it's not always clear if they were actual practitioners, or if it was like a family recipe passed on for a long time. My, my other favorite is there are some texts that are attributed to Cleopatra. But these texts, again, are mostly on cosmetics.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  And so there's a debate of, alright, are you just using that name? Because it has this great, um, I'm marketing aspect to it of like, the most beautiful, you know, the, the one who ensnared Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. And you want to look as beautiful as her here, read her book. And yeah, men write it.

• 1:06:44Liv Albert?

  I mean, that sounds like an awful big coincidence. If that's what she wrote, given however many languages she spoke, and like how generally brilliant and strategic she was. I have a feeling she wasn't writing down makeup tips, but you never know.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Never know. But yeah, so it is, it's like when women appear in texts, it really is for the benefit of men a lot of the time. So.

• 1:07:10Liv Albert?

  That's so fascinating. What you were saying too earlier about the staying power of, of medical texts. Galen is like, is he the most preserved author? He's something like that, right? Where more of his survives than like almost everything else.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, because the, the, um, medical practitioners of, um, the Islamic world really liked his work. So they, a lot of them, not only just copied it, but they commented on it. They had their own versions and they would engage with the text. So, um, even if you don't have an exact copy of like what his work was, you have people engaging with the text that you can still reconstruct a lot of what Galen was saying versus like, but this is what I think instead.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  So yes, he was just very well liked, um, for whatever reason. He's kind of an iffy guy. My, my favorite story about him is he was kicked out of Rome the first time. Cause he's, he's originally from Anatolia, um, from, ah, what's that place?

• 1:08:17Liv Albert?

  Ephesus is the only place I know.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  That sounds right. Yeah. So he's from there. He goes and gets training in Alexandria and he, he actually works as a surgeon for, for a person who owns gladiators because you actually need to maintain your gladiators. They are an investment and you don't want them dying that easily. So that's where he got a lot of his surgical training and eventually he makes his way to Rome. He does like demonstrations, uh, kind of very cruel experiments on animals in particular that are not great to hear about. But he pisses off a bunch of doctors in Rome. So he kind of gets kicked out the first time. And then eventually, uh, Marcus Aurelius calls

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

  him to the front lines to be his doctor. He's like, okay, I'm gonna work for the emperor. Let's do it. And he gets there and Marcus Aurelius is left because plague is broken out. So he's like returned to Rome to avoid getting, getting sick. And so, uh, you can tell that Galen is pretty upset by this because he makes his way to Rome and Marcus Aurelius is gonna head back to the front lines and Galen's like, so listen, Asclepius sent me this dream and he says that's not a good idea. So please don't send me there. And Marcus Aurelius agrees. He's like, okay, that's fine. You stay here and take care of Commodus.

• 1:09:40Liv Albert?

  Oh, fun.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, of Joaquin Phoenix fame from Gladiator.

• 1:09:44Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  And he hated it. And I'm like, that was just poetic on so many levels.

• 1:09:51Liv Albert?

  That's great. I didn't know that they, I, I know so little of Rome, but I know names. So I'm, I had no idea that Galen like matched up with that at all. That's, yeah. And then of course, you know, I, I know names often specifically to what movies I have seen.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:10:07Liv Albert?

  I'm much better at Greece, but Rome escapes me for sure.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  That was me. Like my first love was Greece and then I just happened to dig at a Roman site. And so I had to learn a lot over the last few years. And even then, when people are asking me emperors and wars and things happening, I'm like, I'm just focused on this, this one lady here in the countryside and taking care of people and what her life looked like. I don't know what was happening in Rome at the time.

• 1:10:36Liv Albert?

  That's fair. I feel like that's best. Like, stay out of the Roman military stuff. That's what I don't want any part in.

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  And it's, you know, that's, that's what's kind of cool, too, is when you do get, when you get away from the literature, and you're focusing on just like, these people in the province and what their everyday lives look like, you kind of, you really do get that aspect of like, how much would a war up in England or something, how much would that resonate for a person living in Sicily at the time? It probably doesn't register at all.

• 1:11:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, why would it? Yeah.

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  And so, it's, it's like, I know those, like, all events trickle down and shape our personal lives to some extent, but I also, you know, I don't know what Biden did today exactly, because it's just not in my thoughts. But when big decisions happen, it can have an impact. But most of the time, you're not thinking about it too much.

• 1:11:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's, yeah, that's so true and so interesting, because I think, and certainly why I stay away from Rome, is like, is all of the military buffs who I just don't want to hear from. But really, you know, it was a big place, and there were people just existing and living their lives and doing these cool things, like medicine and everything, and that's just, that's so intriguing. It, what you said, like, right at the very top about Rome being when witches become evil.

• 1:12:01Liv Albert?

  So I, I had a guest on the show back around Halloween to talk about Roman witches. And that's just so true. And it didn't really occur to me, I think, actually, I did say something about that, like, the difference between Greek and Roman witches, but like, of course, it's, it's such a Rome thing to be like, yeah, like, I mean, the Greeks did not treat their women particularly well, but they didn't make them all evil. Like, and especially if you're divine at all, or have this kind of power, like, it, it's, you have the difference between Roman and Greek witches, because it was, it was Maxwell Powell, who was on my show, and talking about the, the witch that's in, um, in a Horus poem, and this witch is described in the most wild and like,

• 1:12:42Liv Albert?

  Comedic and horrific and like, just it's the most absurd description of a human woman. And then I compare it to like my knowledge of Circe and Medica and Hecate and these who are badass. And sure, Medica does bad things, whatever, but she's badass throughout.

• 1:13:03Liv Albert?

  She's respectable. She's not made to be this comedic mess.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a, and like it, some, some of the differences are just, they're not even subtle. Like Circe and Medica are young and beautiful. And Erycto and Candida are old and ugly and sex obsessed and.

• 1:13:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it was, it was Canidia that, that we talked about on my show and I was, you are, this is a wild character. Like just an absolute monster. Meanwhile, exactly like Hecate and, and Circe. And I guess Hecate is not described very much, but she's a goddess either way. Um, but Circe and Medica and like, oh yeah, the comparison is really something else.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's, it's kind of interesting that, um, I think my first exposure to Roman witches was the witches in, um, Apuleius's Golden Ass or Metamorphoses. And that, I love the story of Moroi, like she's just, a whole town upset her. So she's going to lock everyone in their houses until she gets what she wants. And then carries on with her way, but, um, there's actually, there's also a woman who spoke out against her. And she has the ability to stop her, um, pregnancy in terms of like, she's just going to be, um, pregnant for a long time. Until the, until she gets this witch to forgive her. And it's a very interesting parallel.

• 1:14:33Speaker 03

  There is a record at, um, Epidavros, the cult of Asclepius in Greece, where supposedly a woman went there saying like, hey, I want to get pregnant. But it was one of those weird wish things where Asclepius is like, okay. And she was pregnant for like two years supposedly, and she had to go back. It's like, I would like to give birth now. He's like, oh, you should have like specified.

• 1:14:59Liv Albert?

  That sounds like an oracle pronouncement where you're like, you have to just guess correctly in what the oracle actually means.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  Yup.

• 1:15:08Liv Albert?

  Or ask a very, very specific question.

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  And so it's like, I see, you know, that connection to childbirth and the power to, and Ilathia, and the mother of Artemis and Apollo, who has the ability through a certain action of stopping a pregnancy from happening. And so I love stories like that because it's so much of woman's health, unfortunately, is tied to her womb and whether or not that womb is behaving or being hysterical or... And unfortunately, like, healthcare for women in the ancient world, as written by men, is, oh, something's wrong, get pregnant and that will solve the problem.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  That is probably eight times out of 10, the cure for women.

• 1:16:02Liv Albert?

  Oh, God. That's like a death sentence.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not great. So, so this connection that women always have to childbirth in particular, like, that is always a role, women, that's always the space women have occupied. It just goes to show like how unknowledgeable a lot of men are about it because women always took care of that. And it would be really interesting to know, there's an exception, Saranis and Galen both write about midwifery. And I think one of them has a work called Gynecology. And Saranis, in particular, gives like a pretty apt description of like what makes a very good midwife, like what kind of tools she should have. But it's also tied to her education and things like that.

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  But as people have pointed out, it's like how many women, especially of lower classes, would have actually been... Literate and but they are still going out and practicing this and taking care of it. So I, the fact that witches are also tied to childbirth and the ability to not let it happen and to actually let it happen is to me always alludes back to this connection to midwifery skills and things like that. So.

• 1:17:17Liv Albert?

  Absolutely. I can't believe the timing of this because I didn't think about it at all. I, I did this Artemis episode on a whim because I, the episode I had planned got screwed up. But Artemis also is, is a goddess of childbirth. And, and I was reading through part of this hymn by Calymachus, which is where we get kind of all of the detailed description of her sort of origin story because no one talked about her all that much before that. And he's Hellenistic, which is interesting too. But there's a very specific moment where they're talking about childbirth and how Artemis has the ability to take away the pain from her mother. Uh, like even giving birth to Artemis herself and then Apollo

• 1:17:58Liv Albert?

  too of like just completely taking away that pain. And of course, in the, in the moment of researching this, I didn't think anything of that because I don't think about medicine and I, I don't ever think about childbirth, thank the gods. But now I'm seeing it too is like that is part of the same thing of, of the ability to alleviate pain in childbirth would I'm sure have been a major skill in people who were dealing with this. And I don't know if they, you know, connected it with Artemis i- in, in that way. But it's fascinating to know that they are so explicit about these goddesses who have this, this ability when it comes to childbirth and like the details of what they could do, including

• 1:18:41Liv Albert?

  making it less painful, making it an easy process, like all of these things that would have been so legitimately important back then when it came to childbirth and like life saving and, and how kind of real they were, even, even with the goddesses, let alone humanity.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. There is, um, on Cyprus, there is a very old terracotta, uh, model of childbirth that they think was actually used by women to show.

• 1:19:09Liv Albert?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  Like steps of like how to take care of a woman giving birth. And eventually, I mean, this is where I was coming from for my research is like, oh, childbirth imagery doesn't exist, except in the very myth, mythological representations. And they like to do like Athena springing from Zeus's head. Again, a very androcentric view of childbirth.

• 1:19:32Liv Albert?

  There's a great one of Gaia, like, holding up a baby out of the ground where she's like half in the earth because she is the earth. And she's just like, holding up a little baby, which is like a little bit less, I suppose, androcentric, but it's not super practical.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  Is, and that's just it is like you, like, I kept hearing, it's like, oh, the Greeks and the Romans, like, they viewed it as something icky, as something like they didn't want to depict in their artwork. And then it's like, well, then where did this fragment come from? Like, that is a very explicit, and it like, it looks painful. It's a very explicit scene of childbirth. And it's like, it just didn't appear out of nowhere.

• 1:20:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Speaker 03

  And I, I do believe more of those images exist in the archaeological record. And I'm hoping we'll see more of it. But another thing that was pointed out is over time, like you do have a movement away from, we see some representations in Egypt as well of actually more realistic depictions of women in labor and childbirth. But what becomes a very popular scene is, is switching to the khorotrophos, the woman nursing instead. Which I, I think is also probably an interesting pattern because of other slaves that are highly valued for their role as women is nursemaids. And you will actually see a lot of women gain income and gain their freedom

• 1:20:50Speaker 03

  from some of their, the former children they took care of and were nursemaids to.

• 1:20:55Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  And I think that follows, you know,

• 1:21:00Speaker 03

  Infant mortality rates and mother maternal mortality rates in the world, ancient world can be so abysmal sometimes that having your mother might often not be the one who actually got to care for you again. So the fact that she gave childbirth might have not been as important as the nursemaid, the woman who actually fed you and cared for you, because I think those two things did become distinct at some point because so many women were dying in childbirth that this image focusing more on nursing became like kind of the best representation of the mother-infant relationship because that might have just been the reality for a lot of people growing up that if your

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  mother didn't die giving birth to you, but she's expected to give birth to multiple children, she probably did die in childbirth at some point.

• 1:21:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah, because I mean, I could only imagine how many they would have had as well, and let alone the risks. Oh, my God. It's all horrifying, that part. But this is also interesting.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  And I I forget what drug it's supposed to, but like, we see stuff all the time of like, what women were attempting to use to prevent pregnancy. Like, that was a very real thing that women were doing, to the point that like, Augustus is making a law to try and control female sexual behavior. But also, it's like, if you have, I think it's three children, and you're you're a Roman citizen, then you don't, you no longer have to have a male be your, they call it your tutor, but basically, like, you are independent, like, you have your own individual to make business decisions and things like that, if you have like, a certain amount of children. So like, huh. So like, the, you

• 1:22:49Speaker 03

  know, the government was actively promoting women giving birth to children. And that's kind of what's interesting to see now is like, in the United States, it's like, The birth rate is dropping. It's like, huh, I wonder why.

• 1:23:03Liv Albert?

  Really? Oh, my god.

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  And, you know, here in the US, we're dealing with this challenge to Roe versus Wade. And like, what that does is forces women to have more children for the benefit of this elder population who is control of the government. And you need a younger population to take care of you when you can't work anymore. So it's not surprising these laws are trying to control women's bodies again and force us back to functioning as a womb and not anything else without actually providing resources for the actual childcare to raise that population.

• 1:23:43Liv Albert?

  Well, and even maternity leave and paternity leave and anything like, and oh, my god, I'm perpetually in horror of what happens down there. I mean, it's not great up here for different reasons, but thankfully abortion is rarely on the table here. But it's just, it's so horrifying. Yeah, it's, yeah, controlling those with a uterus is just ugh, and never ending. And, oh, my gosh.

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's, that's partly why I love investigating these alternative forms of care in the ancient world because biomedicine, for a long time, was strictly for that purpose of a woman is healthy if her womb is working correctly. That is how women's health is defined. And that is not what my entire life is about, so.

• 1:24:31Liv Albert?

  I'm never gonna use mine. Thank god. Not ever. I don't care if it's even there.

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  It's so frustrating sometimes. And, and again, it's like, that's why even things like the anti-vaxxer movement, there's no surprise that here in the US, that started with very liberal women because they have looked at systems like this that actively have tried to control their bodies. And they're like, I don't know, let's see what aromatherapy and crystals will do, which is not something I recommend either, but, you know, there's, there's studies of like, there's this huge study on.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  Heart health that went over a span of years and every single participant in it was a man. And they, it's like, no wonder we don't know what symptoms of heart attacks look like in women, because our research was based on men to begin with. And that's, that's always where, um, and where that comes in is because for some reason, biomedicine, which has been defined by men for a long time, they looked at the hormones that women's bodies produce. And they said, oh, that's going to mess up our studies. Like, those are variables we can't control.

• 1:25:47Liv Albert?

  That is, I can't even fathom that. I know. It doesn't make any fucking sense.

• 1:25:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:25:50Liv Albert?

  Like, yet, control the fucking variables then, because it's half the population.

• 1:25:54Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:55Liv Albert?

  Are you fucking kidding? It sounds like, you know, and, and I know this is a huge issue in the States, and I'm sure in Canada too, um, but the ways in which medicine has defined, uh, people who weren't white and, and care for, for people who weren't white. And, and of course, I mean, let alone like, uh, uh, gender non-conforming and, and trans people and, and what they have to deal with, with all of that. And I'm conscious of, you know, I don't think we should not use the word women, but also it does apply to people with uteruses generally.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:25Liv Albert?

  But that's not the right, proper plural of uterus live. We're talking about Rome. Um, but yeah, I mean, just the ways in which medicine generally has been all about white men. And like, as if, as if they're the only people that exist.

• 1:26:43Speaker 03

  Well, and famously, like, modern gynecology came about by experimenting on the bodies of enslaved African-American women.

• 1:26:53Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:54Speaker 03

  Specifically because at one point, trade to bring slaves into the country was banned. And that meant, all right, you need to have the population you do have here, reproduce as much as possible. And that is what our modern gynecological medicine is based upon.

• 1:27:13Liv Albert?

  That is so horrifying.

• 1:27:16Liv Albert?

  And I always, I mean, I, I don't forget, but I think it gets lost, especially again, like as a Canadian, but I'm sure it gets lost in the States too, because it's like actively not taught. But the, the amount of time that the States continued to have enslaved people after it was seen as completely horrific, like everywhere else, basically. And the way that, then the ways, the, the lengths that they went to, to keep it that way is always shocking, even if it shouldn't be, but wow.

• 1:27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:27:50Liv Albert?

  Well, we've brought it roll low.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  I know. I, I do have one last parting quote that like,

• 1:27:55Liv Albert?

  Great.

• 1:27:56Speaker 03

  I found that, um, it's not Greek or Roman, but it, it gives meaning to my own research that I really like. And it was, um, it comes from, I believe a letter by Marie E. Zakruska, who was a, a doctor in 1881. And this is what she wrote, "Will there ever be a monument to the first woman physician? We need such landmarks of civilization, not because those who died have lived for fame, no, but because the now living, as well as those who live long afterward, need encouragement for utilizing their capabilities. And monuments of this sort suggested them the possibility of their doing.

• 1:28:34Speaker 03

  The person who is covered by a monument is of no consequence, but the fact that a woman can work and make an impression upon civilization needs to be known to be remembered."

• 1:28:44Liv Albert?

  That's so beautiful.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  I know. It's like.

• 1:28:47Liv Albert?

  And important and true. And oh my gosh, how like, how beautifully said too.

• 1:28:52Speaker 03

  I, yeah. It's like, I can't say it better than that. And so I, I wanted to introduce these women who were engaged in healthcare, both imagined and real, like they existed. Um, they've been here for a long time and hopefully more research will be done to uncover their stories.

• 1:29:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for sharing them here. Like. This is always true at the end of a conversation, but I just like sit here with like all of the surprise and excitement and oh my God, it's just my favorite thing in the world to get to have these conversations. So thank you so much.

• 1:29:29Speaker 03

  Thank you. I was very excited to share it and it's always great to have conversations with people who are passionate about similar things and it makes me feel good about what I'm doing. So.

• 1:29:41Liv Albert?

  Oh, I'm so glad and my listeners are gonna love this. Like I I'm constant, not not surprised, but like I'm just constantly getting like this feedback about how much my listeners love these conversation episodes, which is is so huge for me because this started as like just a nonsense thing of me doing and rambling on and on and, you know, did not begin particularly intelligently or academically. And then now I get to have like these incredibly smart people and and share it and my listeners are so keen for it and that's so cool for me. So, oh my gosh, it's such a thrill.

• 1:30:15Speaker 03

  And someone who wants to get out of the publisher parish like system of academia, this is how I prefer to like disseminate information. Like I want it to be a conversation that is accessible to people because to me that is how like these very human stories is what we connect on and not like the high technical writing put behind a paywall and journals and things like that. So.

• 1:30:41Liv Albert?

  That's the thing, right? Like and it you spread it to people beyond the field. And I think that's so important because why not? Like, why not? Share this with people who are not academically learning about this ancient world because it's just as beneficial to learn, if not more so, because it's completely beyond, you know, what people study in their regular lives or just how they live their lives. And then they're learning this incredibly cool new thing. So I'm very grateful that so many fancy scholars agree with you and want to share my show.

• 1:31:15Liv Albert?

  Is there anything? Well, not is there anything, but will you tell my listeners where to find more on you, more of your of anything and including your podcast and just please share every and anything you want?

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, let me, um, because I always forget my own handle for some reason. So.

• 1:31:29Liv Albert?

  That's totally fair. You're not alone. This happens a lot.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  On Twitter, you can find me at CM Vogue, just like the magazine is my handle. And I am also part of the podcast, Movies We Dig. We've got two archaeologists and a classicist talking about the ancient world. And you can find that on Twitter as well, at dig underscore movies. So hopefully we'll get some new listeners through this.

• 1:31:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and I don't know what I will and will not keep from earlier. So just to say, I will be on the show soon enough. We're just figuring out when, but to, yeah, that'll be really, I don't want, I won't give away what I'm talking about. But safe to say, everyone who's listening right now is going to love it. So we'll definitely send people that way.

• 1:32:16Speaker 03

  We are so excited because like, besides actually talking about the ancient world, my other favorite thing is we tell these stories in new formats all the time. And like, what does that say about us as a society? And when we retell these stories in new ways? So like, that's the whole other side of the conversation I like to have. And I'm very excited to have you join us there.

• 1:32:40Liv Albert?

  Oh, so am I. Oh, my gosh. And I, it's a thing that I've never seen and it's gonna be, it's gonna be a lot. It's gonna be interesting.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  It's gonna be nuts. I, I'm excited for it. Um, I have seen some things that I did not even know existed before. So it's, it's a really fun thing to do, for sure.

• 1:32:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, well, truly, thank you so much for doing this. It's been such a thrill. I've learned so much and it's just the best. Oh, my gosh.

• 1:33:04Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I look forward to listening to the other conversations you'll have as well.

• 1:33:26Liv Albert?

  Nerds, thank you so much for listening. Conversation episodes are just so, so much fun. I mean, let's be honest, my job is just so much fun. I've recorded like four episodes in the past two days and I've talked about how much fun it all is in every one, because it always is. This episode, though, was just so unique in that it's a topic that I would have like, never, ever thought anything about. And yet, there was so much to learn, so much for Christie to share with us. I'm just so deeply thrilled with it all. Thrilled as I edited it, listened to everything all over again, being reminded how incredible these ancient women are, the way they found their unique ways of thriving in what is

• 1:34:06Liv Albert?

  often such a stifling and rigid world. So such an enormous thank you to Christie for coming on the show and bestowing all this knowledge on us. And make sure you subscribe to the Movies We Dig podcast. Stay tuned, because next week, we're recording my episode, and it's about a series that many of you have asked me about. It's gonna be fun. So thank you, as always, for coming along through this episode. It means so, so much to me that you all love to hear these conversations, that you want to hear this stuff, and learn as much as I do. Let's Talk About Myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith handles so many things, including some editing, running the YouTube, promotional

• 1:34:47Liv Albert?

  material, research, and more. She's a gem. The podcast is hosted and monetized by Acast. It is very cool that I've gotten to the point where I should read credits. I am Liv, and I absolutely fucking love this shit, obviously.

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  Hi, folks. It's Danny Pellegrino from Everything Iconic. The new Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County, is coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, November 12. Jen Affleck leads a new group of women with the hope of forming a sense of community, but moral divides threaten to tear the group apart. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County, on November 12. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:37:24Speaker 06

  Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess, with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.

• 1:37:41Speaker 07

  The much awaited sequel Game of Thieves comes out December 8th. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.

• 1:37:55Speaker 06

  And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.

• 1:38:08Speaker 07

  Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait. Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.