Steven M. Oberhelman

This book is a study of three iatrosofia (the notebooks of traditional healers) from the Ottoman and modern periods of Greece. The main text is a collection of the medical recipes of the monk Gymnasios Lauriōtis (b. 1858). Gymnasios had a working knowledge of over 2,000 plants and their use in medical treatments. Two earlier iatrosofia are used for parallels for Gymnasios’s recipes. One was written c. 1800 by a practical doctor near Khania, Crete, and illustrated by a second hand. The second iatrosofion dates to the sixteenth century; ascribed to a Meletios, the text survives in the Codex Vindobonensis gr. med. 53. The contents of these and other iatrosofia are predominantly medical, with many of the remedies taken from folk medicine, classical and Hellenistic pharmacological writers, and Galen. The book opens with a biography of the monk Gymnasios and his recipes and then a description of the Cretan and Meletios iatrosofia. The iatrosophia, their role in Greek medical history, and the methods of healing are the subject of chapter 2. The Greek text of Gymnasios’s recipes are accompanied by a facing English translation. A commentary offers for each of Gymnasios’s recipes passages (translated into English) from the two other iatrosophia to serve as parallels, as well as an analysis of the pharmacopoeia in the medical texts. The book concludes with Greek and English indices of the material medica (plants, mineral, and animal substances) and the diseases, and then a general index.

The Medical Recipes of Gymnasios Lauriōtis in Context

Healing Manuals from Ottoman and Modern Greece

Victoria Pedrick

'The Soul of Tragedy' brings together scholars to offer perspectives on the Greek tragedy. The collection pays homage to this genre by offering an exploration into the oldest form of dramatic expression.

Essays on Athenian Drama

The Soul of Tragedy

Dreambooks in Byzantium offers for the first time in English translation and with commentary six of the seven extant Byzantine oneirocritica, or manuals on the interpretation of dreams. (The seventh, The Oneirocriticon of Achmet ibn Sereim was published previously by the author.) Dreams permeated all aspects of Byzantine culture, from religion to literature to everyday life, while the interpretation of the future through dreams was done by professionals (emperors had their own) or through oneirocritica. Dreambooks were written and attributed to famous patriarchs, biblical personages, and emperors, to fictitious writers and interpreters, or were copied and published anonymously. Two types of dreambooks were produced: short prose or verse manuals, with the dreams usually listed alphabetically by symbol; and long treatises with subject matter arranged according to topics and with elaborate dream theory. The manuals were meant for a popular audience, mainly readers of the middle and lower classes; their content deals with concerns like family, sickness and health, poverty and wealth, treachery by friends, fear of authorities, punishment and honor-concerns, in other words, that pertain to the individual dreamer, not to the state or a cult. The dreambook writers drew upon various sources in Classical and Islamic literature, oral and written Byzantine materials, and, perhaps, their own oneirocritic practices. Much of the source-material was pagan in origin and, therefore, needed to be reworked into a Christianized context, with many interpretations given a Christian coloring. For each dreambook the author provides a commentary focusing on analyses of the interpretations assigned to each dream-symbol; historical, social, and cultural discussions of the dreams and interpretations; linguistic, lexical, and grammatical issues; and cross-references with Achmet, Artemidorus, and the other Bzyantine dreambooks. There are also introductory chapters on Byzantine dream interpretation; the authors, their dates, and sources; the manuscripts of the dreambooks; and a lengthy discussion of the contribution of these dreambooks to psychohistory, cultural history, historical sociology, and gender studies. The book is unique in that it offers a full study, through translation and commentary, of the oneirocritica to a wide audience - Byzantinists, Arabists, cultural historians, medievalists (several of the Byzantine dreambooks were translated into Latin and became fundamental dream-texts throughout the Middle Ages), and psychohistorians, all of whom will find the book useful in their study of dreams, transmission of Arabic sources by Byzantine authors, and cultural anthropology. Together with the Oneirocriticon of Achmet, it offers a complete study of dream-interpretation in medieval Greece.

Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction

Dreambooks in Byzantium

Muḥammad Ibn-Sīrīn

Achmet

Aḥmad Ibn Sīrīn

Any scholar interested in dreams will be in Oberhelman's debt. His lucid translation and helpful annotations have brought Achmet away from the private preserve of Byzantinists and into the academic mainstream. His thoughtful introduction not only persuasively argues for Achmet's relevance, but provides a modern, theoretically sophisticated introduction to the study of dreams in their historical context. The side connections that he draws between cultures, time periods, and methodologies of study should provide a valuable stimulus for future work; and, as a valuable bonus, this material could fit very well into the classroom. -- C. Robert Phillips, III Achmet is an observer of culture as he analyzes hundreds of dreams in context of gender, politics, socioeconomic class, psychological and physical state, cultural upbringing and religion.

A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams

The Oneirocriticon of Achmet

This volume centers on dreams in Greek medicine from the fifth-century B.C.E. Hippocratic Regimen down to the modern era. Medicine is here defined in a wider sense than just formal medical praxis, and includes non-formal medical healing methods such as folk pharmacopeia, religion, ’magical’ methods (e.g., amulets, exorcisms, and spells), and home remedies. This volume examines how in Greek culture dreams have played an integral part in formal and non-formal means of healing. The papers are organized into three major diachronic periods. The first group focuses on the classical Greek through late Roman Greek periods. Topics include dreams in the Hippocratic corpus; the cult of the god Asclepius and its healing centers, with their incubation and miracle dream-cures; dreams in the writings of Galen and other medical writers of the Roman Empire; and medical dreams in popular oneirocritic texts, especially the second-century C.E. dreambook by Artemidorus of Daldis, the most noted professional dream interpreter of antiquity. The second group of papers looks to the Christian Byzantine era, when dream incubation and dream healings were practised at churches and shrines, carried out by living and dead saints. Also discussed are dreams as a medical tool used by physicians in their hospital praxis and in the practical medical texts (iatrosophia) that they and laypeople consulted for the healing of disease. The final papers deal with dreams and healing in Greece from the Turkish period of Greece down to the current day in the Greek islands. The concluding chapter brings the book a full circle by discussing how modern psychotherapists and psychologists use Ascelpian dream-rituals on pilgrimages to Greece.

From Antiquity to the Present

Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece

Patrick Baker

Giancarlo Abbamonte

Habent sua fata libelli honors the work of Craig Kallendorf, offering studies in his primary fields of expertise: the history of the book and reading, the classical tradition and reception studies, Renaissance humanism, and Virgilian scholarship.

Studies in Book History, the Classical Tradition, and Humanism in Honor of Craig Kallendorf

Habent sua fata libelli

Richard Joseph Golsan

Van Kelly

Epic and Epoch is a collection of essays based on the works of artists such as Homer, Vergil, Statius, Ovid, Dante, among others. The essays in this book are not only based on history, but on various interpretations of a genre. Rhetorical, literary historical, feminist, and cultural are a few of several perspectives represented in this book.

Steven M. Oberhelman

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