Localization is a key move in the history of medicine across cultures, arguably; but a parallel, if not alternative, narrative can be noticed in the Graeco-Roman tradition (and elsewhere), which I have called one of ‘delocalization’, discussed in Chapter 3:namely, the approach to disease, and especially mental disease, in terms of ‘holistic’ impact on the patient. This surfaces most prominently in some authors, but can also be noticed as a matter of discussion of the locus affectus in great thinkers like Galen. In this particular strand of the history of phrenitis the key authors who have reached us are the Roman author of De medicina, Celsus; the Atomist philosopher and doctor Asclepiades; and the thinkers of the Methodist tradition, represented most extensively by Caelius Aurelianus as far as phrenitis is concerned. This chapter surveys the relevant texts by Celsus and Caelius and the fragmentary evidence on Asclepiades, where an important cluster of shared principles emerges: an interest in psychology and in the health of the individual ‘as a whole’, a disregard for the localization of the disease in a specific body part, and of fever as a key pathological indicator, and a strong inclination towards psychotherapeutical and ‘soothing’ measures.

Giovanni Baptista Morgagni (1682–1771), Professor of Anatomy at Padua, produced the most important studies in the eighteenth century on the De Medicina of the Roman encyclopediast A. Cornelius Celsus.  Morgagni’s intensive reading of Celsus combined his own medical experience with philological emendation.  Morgagni contextualized Celsus’ text within a theoretical framework of an empirically ordered transhistorical investigation of the structure, function, and pathology of the human body.  Here ancient and modern disciplinary authorities engaged with the same evidence available to the senses.  Morgagni’s argument in part contrasted Celsus’ humoralist evidence that bladder stones originate in the substance of the urine with Friedrich Hoffmann’s (1660–1742) argument that bladder stones originate in the iatromechanist action of the kidneys.  Morgagni’s emendations continue to mark our own contemporary editions of Celsus’ Latin text.

This chapter turns to anatomical texts of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, encompassing all texts that handle anatomy in a sustained way, even if not exclusively. It begins by laying out three different categories of anatomical texts that will be operative across the second half of the volume: general books that include anatomy, anatomical handbooks, and anatomical procedures. It then turns to examples from the periods under study, in each case describing the texts, querying the extent to which they are reliant on dissection, and addressing their fortunes, with particular attention to the ways they were received by Galen and other anatomical authorities of the Roman period. Authors covered include Alcmaeon, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Democritus, Empedocles, the authors of the Hippocratic Corpus, Plato, Diocles, Mnesitheus, Dieuches, Aristotle, the early Peripatetics, Praxagoras, Pleistonikus, Phylotimus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Celsus, and Pliny the Elder. It also briefly addresses anatomical passages in more literarily and philosophically focussed authors, including Callimachus, Philo Judaeus, the early Stoics, Cicero, Horace, and Seneca.

Starting from the position that Celsus’ Jew is a real Jew and that he is (probably) quoting from a Jewish anti-Christian tract produced in Alexandria in the mid-second century CE, this essay explores the sources of Celsus’ knowledge of Judaism, not only the LXX but non-biblical sources as well, and assesses what Celsus might tell us about the Jewish community in Alexandria after the revolt under Trajan, and its relationship with emerging Christianity in the same city. It questions the standard claim that the Jewish community in Alexandria was obliterated when the Romans suppressed the revolt.

The essay deploys the rhetorical trope of personification to explore the role of the Jew in the Contra Celsum, for Origen and for Celsus himself, as well as a literary figure, before considering his place within intersecting Christian and Jewish literary traditions.

Origen here represents Christian notions of angelification, although brief consideration is given to antecedents, namely Clement of Alexandria and the Valentinians. Origen, like Empedocles, offered a cosmic story of fall and redemption. According to Origen, humans are “cooled” intellects whose natural state is to burn with love for God. A species upgrade is part of humanity’s evolutionary design, but it takes intense moral labor. Origen offers the most speculation on the nature of angels, the original consubstantiality of angels and souls, how angels and souls fell from divine Love, and the moral means of their return.