BODILY FLUIDS IN ANTIQUITY From ancient Egypt to Imperial Rome, from Greek medicine to early Christianity, this volume examines how human bodily fluids influenced ideas about gender, sexuality, politics, emotions, and morality, and how those ideas shaped later European thought. Comprising 24 chapters across seven key themes—language, gender, eroticism, nutrition, dissolution, death, and afterlife—this volume investigates bodily fluids in the context of the current sensory turn. It asks fundamental questions about physicality and fluidity: how were bodily fluids categorised and differentiated? How were fluids trapped inside the body perceived, and how did this perception alter when those fluids were externalised? Do ancient approaches complement or challenge our modern sensibilities about bodily fluids? How were religious practices influenced by attitudes towards bodily fluids, and how did religious authorities attempt to regulate or restrict their appearance? Why were some fluids taboo and others cherished? In what ways were bodily fluids gendered? Offering a range of scholarly approaches and voices, this volume explores how ideas about the body and the fluids it contained and externalised are culturally conditioned and ideologically determined. The analysis encompasses the key geographic centres of the ancient Mediterranean basin, including Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Egypt. By taking a longue durée perspective across a richly intertwined set of territories, this collection is the first to provide a comprehensive, wide-ranging study of bodily fluids in the ancient world. Bodily Fluids in Antiquity will be of particular interest to academic readers working in the fields of classics and its reception, archaeology, anthropology, and ancient to Early Modern history. It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in the history of the body and history of medicine. Mark Bradley is Professor of Classics and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nottingham, UK. Together with Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University, USA), he is editor of a series of volumes on ‘The Senses in Antiquity’ for Routledge, for which he has contributed a volume on Smell and the Ancient Senses (2015). Victoria Leonard is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities at Coventry University, UK, and at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, UK. Her research focuses on the late antique and early medieval western Mediterranean. She has published on religious conflict, gender and violence, and ancient historiography. Laurence Totelin is Reader in Ancient History at Cardiff University, UK. She has published widely on Greek and Roman botany, pharmacology, and gynaecology. BODILY FLUIDS IN ANTIQUITY Edited by Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bradley, Mark, 1977– editor. | Leonard, Victoria, editor. | Totelin, Laurence M. V., editor. Title: Bodily fluids in antiquity / edited by Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020051403 (print) | LCCN 2020051404 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138343726 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367764067 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429438974 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Body fluids—History—To 1500. | Civilization, Classical. | Civilization, Western—Classical influences. Classification: LCC QP90.5 .B34 2021 (print) | LCC QP90.5 (ebook) | DDC 612/.01522—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051403 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051404 ISBN: 978-1-138-34372-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-76406-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43897-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC This book is dedicated to our partners and children, Richard, Philip, Thomas, Llewellyn, and Gwilym. CONTENTS List of figures xi List of tables xii Acknowledgements xiii List of contributors xv Introduction 1 MARK BRADLEY, VICTORIA LEONARD, AND LAURENCE TOTELIN PART I The language of fluidity 15 1 Fluid vocabulary: flux in the lexicon of bodily emissions 17 AMY COKER PART II A woman in flux 41 2 A valid excuse for a day off work: menstruation in an ancient Egyptian village 43 ROSALIND JANSSEN 3 Uterine bleeding, knowledge, and emotion in ancient Greek medical and magical representations 57 IRENE SALVO 4 Puellae gently glow: scent, sweat, and the real in Latin love elegy and Ovid’s didactic works 75 JANE BURKOWSKI vii CONTENTS 5 Overflowing bodies and a Pandora of ivory: the pure humours of an erotic surrogate 89 CATALINA POPESCU PART III Erotic and generative fluids 105 6 The eyes have it: from generative fluids to vision rays 107 JULIE LASKARIS 7 ‘Infertile’ and ‘sub-fertile’ semen in the Hippocratic Corpus and the biological works of Aristotle 120 REBECCA FALLAS 8 Say it with fluids: what the body exudes and retains when Juvenal’s couple relationships go awry 134 CLAUDE-EMMANUELLE CENTLIVRES CHALLET 9 Flabby flesh and foetal formation: body fluidity and foetal sex differentiation in ancient Greek medicine 145 TARA MULDER 10 One-seed, two-seed, three-seed? Reassessing the fluid economy of ancient generation 158 REBECCA FLEMMING 11 Phalli fighting with fluids: approaching images of ejaculating phalli in the Roman world 173 ADAM PARKER PART IV Nutritive and healthy fluids 191 12 A natural symbol? The (un)importance of blood in early Greek literary and religious contexts 193 EMILY KEARNS 13 Taste and the senses: Galen’s humours clarified 210 JOHN WILKINS 14 Breastmilk, breastfeeding, and the female body in early Imperial Rome 224 THEA LAWRENCE viii CONTENTS 15 Breastmilk in the cave and on the arena: early Christian stories of lactation in context 240 LAURENCE TOTELIN PART V Dissolving and liquefying bodies 257 16 Tears and the leaky vessel: permeable and fluid bodies in Ovid and Lucretius 259 PETER KELLY 17 Seneca’s corpus: a sympathy of fluids and fluctuations 272 MICHAEL GOYETTE 18 Bodily fluids, grotesque imagery, and poetics in Persius’Satires 287 ANDREAS GAVRIELATOS PART VI Wounded and putrefying bodies 303 19 ‘Efflux is my manifestation’: positive conceptions of putrefactive fluids in the ancient Egyptian coffin texts 305 TASHA DOBBIN-BENNETT 20 The physiology of matricide: revenge and metabolism imagery in Aeschylus’ Oresteia 321 GORAN VIDOVIĆ 21 Open wounds, liquid bodies, and melting selves in early Imperial Latin literature 338 ASSAF KREBS PART VII Ancient fluids: afterlife and reception 353 22 The reception of classical constructions of blood in Medieval and Early Modern martyrologies 355 ANASTASIA STYLIANOU 23 ‘Expelling the purple tyrant from the citadel’: the menstruation debate in book 2 of Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Sex (1662) 369 CAROLINE SPEARING ix CONTENTS 24 Opening the body of fluids: taking in and pouring out in Renaissance readings of classical women 381 HELEN KING Envoi 399 MARK BRADLEY AND VICTORIA LEONARD Index 407 x FIGURES 0.1 All participants of the conference ‘Bodily Fluids/Fluid Bodies in Greek and Roman Antiquity’, 11 July 2016, St Michael’s College, Cardiff University. xiv 2.1 Recto (a) and verso (b) of a large limestone attendance register in New Egyptian hieratic, dating to the reign of Ramesses II. 47 3.1 (a) Mars Ultor and Tantalus formula, obverse of Michel 2001: no. 383; (b) amphora-shaped womb with divine names and vowels, reverse of Michel 2001: no. 383, gem in black haematite, third century ce. 62 11.1 The Evil Eye surrounded by its enemies, mosaic from Antioch, House of the Evil Eye, second century ce. 175 11.2 The Evil Eye surrounded by its enemies, gold disk from Norfolk, UK, first–fourth centuries ce. 176 11.3 Left-facing zoomorphic phallus attacking an Evil Eye, stone carving from Leptis Magna, Roman Imperial. 177 11.4 A phallus ejaculating towards a stylised Eye, stone carving from Chesters Fort on Hadrian’s Wall, second–fourth centuries ce. 179 11.5 A phallus ejaculating towards an ovoid figure, stone carving from Maryport Fort on Hadrian’s Wall, second–fourth centuries ce. 180 11.6 Phallus urinating towards a pair of vulvas, mosaic from Sousse, Tunisia, second–third centuries ce. 182 11.7 Zoomorphic phallus, copper-alloy tintinnabulum, first century ce. 185 xi TABLES 9.1 Gender possibilities in On Regimen 1.28–9 149 18.1 Liquids linked to the body: external applications 289 18.2 Liquids linked to the body: bodily fluids 290 18.3 Poetic fluidity 291 19.1 Comparison of estimated days to Total Body Scores 8 and 20 across the four Egyptian sites 308 xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Laurence Totelin, Victoria Leonard, and Mark Bradley would like to thank all partici- pants in the original conference ‘Bodily Fluids/Fluid Bodies in Greek and Roman Antiq- uity’, which was held at St Michael’s College, Cardiff University, 11–13 July 2016. They helped to shape discussion and ensured that the conference was intel lectually stimulating and thoroughly enjoyable.