CHAPTER SIX

THE ACCOUNT OF HIPPOCRATES AND THE LOVESICK PRINCE IN THE $IWAN

A strong interest in ethics and a taste for drama and dialogue inform the $iwan's account of how Hippocrates diagnosed an unnamed prince's lovesickness. They offer a clue to what prompted the Islamic reshaping of the tale's classical antecedents. The anecdote in the $iwan is easily recognized as a contaminated version of the tale about how Erasistratus detected the concealed passion of Prince Antiochus for his stepmother, Stratonice, wife of King Seleucus of Antioch. This tale is recounted by Valerius Maximus, Facta ac Dicta Memorabilia 5.7.3, ext. 1; Plutarch, Life of Demetrius 38; Appian, Roman History 11.10; Lucian, The Syrian Goddess 17-18; Julian, Misopogon 347. Grafted to this stock are various features taken from a similar story about how Hippocrates diagnosed the lovesickness of Perdiccas King of Macedon for his deceased father's concubine. This story is told at greatest length in the VHSS. Other features seem to have been taken from Galen's own experience with detecting lovesickness, recounted in the medical treatise Prognosis 6. The reader is referred to Chapter Three, which analyzes in detail the relationship of these classical sources. The opening sentence of the $iwan's story corresponds to the information in the first section of the ancient accounts of the Erasistratus-Antiochus story .1 All the ancient versions state that Antiochus falls passionately in love with his stepmother Stratonice. As a result of his struggle to conceal his unsuitable attachment, he falls into a wasting illness, which becomes critical. Different from the classical stories, however, is the identity of the prince's beloved. In the classical Erasistratus-Antiochus story she is his stepmother Stratonice; here she is the king's concubine. This change reveals the influence of the Hippocrates-Perdiccas story, in which the ailing Perdiccas is pining for Phila, the concubine of his deceased father.2 It is not necessary, however, to assume that as• Sijistani or his source had direct knowledge of the story about Hippocrates and Perdiccas that appears in the VHSS. By Galen's time there was contamination of the two traditions; Galen himself refers to Antiochus' beloved as "his father's

1 J. Mesk, "Antiochus und Stratonike," Rh.M. 68 (1913) 369, divides the story into four sections: 1) a description of the prince's passion for his stepmother and the illness that results from his struggle to conceal it; 2) the diagnosis of the illness by a clever physician; 3) the physician's report of his diagnosis to the king; and 4) the king's transfer of his wife to his son. 2 See Chapter 3 of this study. 106 HIPPOCRATIC LIVES AND LEGENDS concubine" instead of as his stepmother Stratonice when citing the story as an introduction to his own celebrated diagnosis of lovesickness in Prognosis 6.3 Hippocrates' detection of the prince's malady in the $iwan (translation in Appendix B) clearly corresponds to the second section in the classical Erasistratus• Antiochus stories. In this section a clever physician, usually Erasistratus,4 astutely diagnoses the prince's lovesickness. In most of the versions the physician, immediately suspecting that the prince is suffering from lovesickness, confirms his hypothesis by observing closely the prince's physical signs as visitors enter and leave his room.5 In Valerius Maximus it is Antiochus' changes of color and breathing at Stratonice's visits, later confirmed by his pulse, that reveal his love.6 Plutarch mentions the pulse, stammering, blushing, darkened vision and sweating, weakness, stupor, and pallor.7 In Lucian and Julian, however, Erasistratus makes his diagnosis by laying his hand on Antiochus' heart.8 The first way in which the $iwan differs from the classical accounts is the physician's identity-Hippocrates is called in instead of Erasistratus. The $iwan's next departure is Hippocrates' procedure. His first step is to check the prince's pulse and urine. From these he concludes that there is nothing physically wrong with the prince. Appian's is the only account that provides a parallel; before hypothesizing that Antiochus is suffering from what we today would call a psychosomatic illness, Erasistratus determines that Antiochus' body is free of any physical disease.9 How he determines this Appian does not state. One model for the first step of Hippocrates' procedure in the $iwan may have been, again, Galen's Prognosis 6. Galen first ascertains that Justus' wife is not feverish. Then, through careful observation of the woman's habits and talking to her servant, he concludes that she is suffering, not from a physical illness, but from a psychological disturbance. 10 It is true that Galen does not mention taking the woman's pulse, but that would have been understood as a standard procedure in checking for the

3 Galen, Prognosis to Epigenes 6, ed. V. Nutton, GMG V 8, 1 (Berlin, 1979), p. 100, II. 9- 10: 'tOV eprow. 'tllc; 1t