Christian Laes

Martha L. Rose

C. F. Goodey

"This is the first volume ever to systematically study the subject of disabilities in the Roman world. The contributors examine the topic a capite ad calcem, from head to toe. Chapters deal with mental and intellectual disability, alcoholism, visual impairment, speech disorders, hermaphroditism, monstrous births, mobility problems, osteology and visual representations of disparate bodies. The authors fully engage with literary, papyrological, and epigraphical sources, while iconography and osteo-archaeology are taken into account. Also the late ancient evidence is taken into account. Refraining from a radical constructionist standpoint, the contributors acknowledge the possibility of discovering significant differences in the way impairment was culturally viewed or assessed."--

Disparate Bodies, a Capite Ad Calcem

Disabilities in Roman Antiquity

Autism, Down syndrome, and other such labels assume that intellectual disability is a permanent aspect of human nature. C.F. Goodey demonstrates that intellectual disability and even intelligence are instead historically contingent creations, which are rooted in early modern cultural and religious matrices and corresponding forms of social organisation, and which have subsequently undergone continuous change. This paradigm-shifting book is also an urgent and compassionate appeal for us to consider, through the prism of history, how the apparent certainties of modern biology, medicine and psychology came to question the ethical status of some of us.

C. F. Goodey

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