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Celsus de Medicina Aulus Cornelius Celsus: Ueber die Artzneiwissenschaft; übersetzt und erklärt von Eduard Scheller: zweite Auage von Walther Frieboes. Braunschweig: Vieweg und Sohn, 1906. 8vo. Pp. xlii + 862. Tafeln iv. M. 18.
Clifford Allbutt
The Classical Review / Volume 22 / Issue 05 / August 1908, pp 151 - 154 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00001712, Published online: 27 October 2009
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00001712
How to cite this article: Clifford Allbutt (1908). The Classical Review, 22, pp 151-154 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00001712
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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 28 Apr 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW any sympathy, will perhaps look kindly on compare 3. 95 'latet anguis in herba' with the suggestion that these obscurities and 4. 24 occidet et serpens': and once more, inconsequences are most easily explained by 3. 93, ' ipse aries etiam nunc uellera siccat' supposing that, as e.g. in Eel. x., so here with 4. 43-44, ' ipse sed in pratis aries . . . Virgil is alluding to or half-quoting poems mutabit uellera luto.' (Add 3. 101, 4. 10.) familiar to his readers. And whose poems These coincidences may be mere coinci- could these be here (in Eel. iii.) save Pollio's ? dences. But they are, I fancy, striking, and ' Pollio et ipse facit noua carmina.' Let us lend support to the view that Virgil owes assume for a moment that this is so. Then something in the fourth Eclogue to Pollio. compare iii. 89, ' mella fluant illi, ferat et I trust that these rather haphazard notes rubus asper amomum ' with 4. 30, ' sudabunt may stimulate persons to read a very scholarly roscida mella,' and 4. 25 'uulgo nascetur and interesting book, to which my notice amomum.' Compare again 3. 92 ' qui legitis has not done justice. flores et humi nescentia fraga,' with 4. 18-20 : H. W. GARROD.
REVIEWS
CELSUS DE MEDICINA. Aulus Cornelius Celsus: Ueber die Artznei- a culture, neighbouring indeed—especially to wissenschaft; iibersetzt und erklart von the Greek provinces of Italy—but in bent, EDUARD SCHELLER : zweite Auflage von in prejudice, in self-consistency, in naivete, WALTHER FRIEBOES. Braunschweig: Vie- and in religious faith profoundly alien where weg und Sohn, 1906. 8vo. Pp. xlii + 862. not in polar opposition. In the Etrusco- Tafeln iv. M. 18. roman religion polytheism and its associated magic were carried to amazing degrees, degrees THE story of the De Medicina of Celsus is a which seem extraordinary even for such remarkable one. On the one hand it is phenomena. In Medicine not only the perhaps to be regarded as the chief treatise several functions but the several stages or on Medicine, at any rate of the ancient world, perversions of function, as in childbirth for for ' Hippocrates,' as we all know, is not a instance, had each its own little deity with treatise but a Canon, or book of Scriptures; a proper ritual and liturgy. It would be and of other eminent and even epoch-making otiose, and here certainly inappropriate, to works on Medicine, some are partial to discuss the multifarious and pettifogging particular fields of the art, in some the occupations of this pantheon. To this several chapters are out of proportion to system of superstitious observance, Greek each other, or again are clumsy or defec- thought was in radical antagonism. To tive in literary form : yet the De Medicina, quote the well-known words of Hippo- which in form and proportion is almost crates, 'The populace attribute the causes perfect, comes in all probability from the of diseases to God; but in my opinion hand not of a physician but of a layman. all these sufferings, like all other things, are And there are other curious and notable divine; and no one of them is either more facts on record concerning the treatise ; such divine or more human than another, but all as its disappearances for long periods of time, are divine alike: each of them has however and the fitful and occasional glimpses of it its own natural properties, and none arises during these obscurations. Of still wider save in natural order.' Compare this sentence interest is its place in history as a part of with Cato's obligatory burdens to his other- one of the most interesting experiments in wise not contemptible surgery, such as the progress of ideas; the experiment of ' Incipe can tare in malo—Sanitas Fracto— transplanting Greek ideas upon a people and motas vaeta daries dardaries astata taries, die '52 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW una paries, usque dum coeant,' and the rest receipts and fantastic antidotes; and such of the rubbish which he enjoined on the indeed were the medicines which were pro- practice of Medicine. moted from the store-room to the drug closet Stubborn as was the Roman reluctance of the Roman father. The swaggering Greek against the invasion of Greek ideas, not only doctors however did not fail so to vaunt because of their solvent effect upon primitive their novelties that Pliny saw the art changed institutions, but also, and with better reason, daily like a garment; and he did not appre- because of the immoral and enervating pro- hend under these flaunting changes of flag clivities and the rascality of the hungry the more serious and deeper development of greeklings who flocked to shake the Roman doctrine. pagoda tree; yet, such is the penetrating Of this development Celsus shone as no power of ideas, they stealthily made their original but as a masterly exponent; and his way into Roman culture in spite of the influence in patrician circles must have been antique fathers. In his recent book on The cathartic. If more than one commentator Cities of St. Paul, Sir William Ramsey illus- has compared the De Medicina to a palimpsest trates this process in various departments of in which the greek text glimmers through the life. He points out how in the division latin, yet none has failed to admire the of time municipal was gradually converted sagacity of the argument and the beauty of into national chronology; how farming the its form and expression. But far beyond revenues was superseded by the collection of symmetry, lucidity and concinnity, the. most taxes; and how even in that sphere in which precious service of Celsus was that he created Rome was eminent, that of Law, devices were scientific latin; a boon which was gratefully adopted by the praetors from Hellenistic recognised in the Revival of Learning when practice, with slight modifications— not always Celsus had a vogue in measure far exceeding improvements—in respect of wills, contracts, his previous eclipse. After the invention of and the like. While thus religion, manners, printing, 'no scientific work,' says M. language, literature, and even law were Vedrenes, ' was edited so often as his : more undergoing changes by the derivations of than sixty latin, editions have appeared, not Greek ideas, medicine could not stand aloof. counting the many translations.' I would The garrulous and splenetic censures of add that the boon consisted not only in the Pliny, and the scandals which he narrates, adroit latin rendering of greek words and must be taken with salt; yet the fair face of phrases but in the greater achievement of so Medicine can be saved from disgrace only by remodelling latin as to adapt it to the ex- the presumption that the Greek pretenders pression of greek ideas. Celsus indeed di'd to medicine who migrated to Rome in for science what Cicero did for philosophy. Republican and even in Julian times, were And yet we repeat the paradox that Celsus for the most part adventurers. They were was a layman; the strange notion that a man as cunning, we are assured, as the Romans of family spent all this time and refinement on whom they preyed were innocent; yet we of labour upon a subject in which after all he are fain to wonder whence came the wealth could be but an amateur. As the del Lungos, whereof the innocents were plundered ? Such who have devoted their time and scholarship cunning leeches as the Stertinii, or Vectius to the elucidation of their great compatriot, Valens, the minion of Messalina, derived decline to admit this conclusion, one how- their vast gains from the compatriots of ever which has commended itself to most of Verres and the Luculli. Pliny grumbles at his interpreters, it may be well to summarise the inconstancy of medical doctrines no less a few of the chief reasons for it. The first of than at the unruliness of the professors of these is that the De Medicina was not an the art: and Cato's medicine, or Varro's, independent treatise but one Section of a was stolid enough no doubt. To cite Cato many. In a word Celsus was a Summist— himself: ' Ex agricolis maxime pius quaestus, an ' Encyclopaedist'—and a guess has been stabilissimusque consequitur.' Scribonius made that the title of the whole system was Largus consists altogether of traditional 'Cestus,' a kind of title then fashionable, THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 'S3 as in those of view and sagacity which lead him through the 'EyxtLplSiov, HavScKTai, etc., etc., as recorded doctrines of the schools without bias or sub- in a well-known passage in Pliny and Aulus mission to formula, the blending of Hippo- Gellius. Whatever the general title may cratean and Alexandrian medicine, and the have been, the Section on medicine, by the detached commonsense of the treatise point tradition of the MSS., is headed ' Book vi.,' rather to a layman writing for laymen than and commences thus : ' Ut alimenta corpori- to a physician writing for experts who are sure bus sanis agricultura sic sanitatem aegris to smack of their schools, and are apt to be medicina promittit.' And although most of occupied more by technical particulars than these Sections are lost, we possess much at by sagacious universals. Secondly, how are least of the De Agricultura, as it was con- we to explain the disappearance of Celsus' verted to his own use by Columella—let us work, with rare emergence, during some hasten to add, with due acknowledgments, fourteen following centuries? The later an early bud of literary ethics which soon Greek physicians in Rome never refer to withered. From Quintilian, and otherwise, Celsus; not perhaps from any jealousy of a we gather that among the Sections were lay interloper, but regarding him as a layman Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Rhetoric, Strategy. writing for lay folk, and not as an original The life of Celsus was somewhere between authority. Thus during these centuries of Augustus and Claudius, at which period the Galen's unrivalled ascendency Celsus was Roman father still exercised supreme control set aside, not to rise into notoriety till the over his household; and among his privileges humanists were attracted by his style. More was that he 'vetted' not his cattle and his than once in this dark interval the De slaves only, but also his own family. Callings Medicina peeped out. By virtue of his latin in life were not then differentiated in the way Celsus seems to have survived obscurely in we are accustomed to; the Roman house- the closets of the monasteries; for instance, hold was not, as in later times, 'attended by a few words are quoted from him in Gerbert's the family practitioner.' Athenaeus, the 169th letter (tenth century). Augustine is pneumatist, who lived under Claudius, con- said to have made use of Celsus' Section sidered that no man of position could afford on Philosophy; and a reference to him has to be ignorant of medicine. Were we then been detected more than once in passages of to try our hands at a fanciful title we might Cassiodorus, which I have not verified; in one name the whole System 'The Compleat of them under the incorrect name of Caelius Roman Gentleman.' Aurelius. The work sprang into the light in The preparation of a book on Medicine, 1443, when Thomas of Sarzana (Nicholas V.) then, was not in those days so trenchant a discovered the fair MS. of the Ambrosian; slice out of a peculiar domain as it would be but we read in Sabbadini that this was not now. Moreover, of course, the sum of know- the first discovery, for one less perfect was ledge on the subject lay within very much found by il Panormita at Siena in 1429, a narrower and more manageable limits. Of copy of which seems to have been sent other arguments in favour of a lay authorship to Duke Humphry. How the editions ran are that in certain places the professional thereafter we have seen already. reader perceives that the treatment of this When the edition under review appeared point or that is not quite intimate; also that upon the table one's impulse was, with the in paragraphs concerned with ra diSola he editions of the Del Lungos and of M. apologises for calling a spade a spade; a Vedernes before one, to cry out—Another professional writer would have regarded this translation of Celsus ! The first brief survey frankness as needing no apology, or he would of this book however suffices to assure us have signified his meaning under technical that it is a very welcome addition to Celsus terms. To the current arguments I would literature. No date of the first edition is venture to add two more; first, that Celsus' apparent, but the interesting Preface by very mastery of the vernacular tongue, his Professor Kobert of Rostock, though un- adaptation of it to new work, the breadth of dated, is presumably new. The translation, NO. cxcv. VOL. XXII. M THE CLASSICAL REVIEW so far as a few test passages enable a reviewer ' Verzeichnis'—of drugs, foods, and diets. to ascertain, is sound; and the elegancies of There are a few illustrations of instruments the latin shine through the german render- and surgical diseases. Finally is provided ing, as in the original the greek shines one of those full indexes which our German through the latin. The scholarship notes colleagues compile so faithfully. The appear- are excellent in concision and point; a ance of this work, then, is more than justified; section of commentaries on the several it is a valuable, if not indispensable, addition books is appended, and to one of them a to the library of the medical historian. very useful lexicon — modestly called a CLIFFORD ALLBUTT.
JORDAN'S TOPOGRAPHIE DER STADT ROM.
Topographie der Stadt Rom im Alterthum. bears the full responsibility for what is Von H. JORDAN. Erster Band. Dritte really his own work from beginning to Abtheilung. Bearbeitet von CH. HULSEN. end. Berlin: Weidmann, 1907. 8vo. Pp. xxiv That the completion of this volume has + 709. 11 Plans. M. 16. taken twenty years will not surprise anyone who knows the complexity of the material JORDAN'S well-known work on the topo- and its continual increase in quantity and graphy of Rome has, twenty years after his variety. Not only have excavations and death, been at last completed by the appear- discoveries been practically continuous, ance of this volume. Professor Hulsen whether occurring casually in the course of explains in the preface how he undertook building operations, or undertaken ex pro- in 1887 the task of finishing what was at fesso with a view to scientific investigation, the time without doubt the best handbook but researches in archives and libraries have to Roman topography. brought, and are still bringing, new facts The first two parts of volume i., contain- before us as to the changes which the city ing respectively the historical introduction, has undergone since the classical period. followed by the description of the site of The collections of architectural and archaeo- Rome and of the city as a whole, and the logical drawings and of the Renaissance topography of the central portion of the engravings (many of the latter of great ancient city—had already appeared in 1878 rarity) and subsequent periods are beginning and 1885, having been preceded, in 1871, to be worked through systematically and by the second volume, which contained the published: and the immense printed and result of Jordan's preliminary researches into manuscript literature upon the topography the late classical and early mediaeval sources of Rome is becoming better known. of information—the Notitia and Curiosum, Professor Hiilsen's treatment of the the Itinerary of the Einsiedel pilgrim, and enormous amount of material which he has the various editions of the Mirabilia. There collected together is most skilful: the work remained, therefore, the description in detail of compressing it within reasonable bounds of the rest of the city, which Jordan had has been most successfully accomplished, already begun, but with which he had not and the description is extremely clear and made any great progress. Professor Hulsen illuminating. The labour of proof-correction, therefore found it advisable, while making use indeed, must have been very great; and yet of Jordan's material, to begin the work afresh, the misprints that occur are comparatively abandoning the proposed division into old few, and not of any great consequence.1 city, new city, and suburbs, and adopting that by the Augustan regions, in topo- 1 On p. 632 the date of the erection of the temple of graphical, not in numerical order. He thus Aesculapius should be 463/291 (cf. p. 633, where the date is correct).