Plato's View of the 'Wandering Uterus' Mark J. Adair

Plato's View of the 'Wandering Uterus'

Mark J. Adair  The Classical Journal

Vol. 91, No. 2 (Dec., 1995 - Jan., 1996), pp. 153-163

 p 153 the Hippocratic writers discounted the religious views and discussed the wandering womb theory. Plato knew of the medical models but also of the animistic view that the womb was a separate animal that wilfully wandered around causing illness

p 154  is retranslated to    he saw it as a psychological issue- the sexual desire perverted by frustration

Soul, seed and palingenesis in the Hippocratic de Victu

Hynek Bartos

APEIRON: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science. 42.1 (Mar. 2009) p 1=31

Sleeping body and dreaming soul (de Victu IV)

Let us now proceed to the famous passage in Chapter 86, to which most of the asserters of dualistic reading refer. This introductory chapter to Book IV discusses 'signs that come in sleep' and their function in a dietetic diagnosis. The passage reads as follows:

   For when the body is awake the soul is its servant (toi somati
   hupereteousa), and is never her own mistress (aute heoutes), but
   divides her attention among many things, assigning a part of it to
   each faculty of the body--to hearing, to sight, to touch, to
   walking, and to acts of the whole body; but the mind never enjoys
   independence (aute de heoutes he dianoia ou gignetai). But when the
   body is at rest, the soul, being set in motion and awake,
   administers her own household (ton heoutes oikon), and of herself
   performs all the acts of the body. For the body when asleep has no
   perception; but the soul when awake has cognizance of all
   things--sees what is visible, hears what is audible, walks,
   touches, feels pain, ponders. In a word, all the functions of body
   and of soul are performed by the soul during sleep. (61)

Modern scholars often refer to the striking similarity of this passage with the famous fragment 131 of Pindar, (62) generally regarded as 'Orphic' or 'Pythagorean', and with certain passages in Plato's Phaedo. (63) E. R. Dodds has developed this idea in his famous book The Greeks and the Irrational, where the statement in de Victu that a dreaming soul 'becomes its own mistress' leads him to conclude that 'here the influence of the Orphic view is evident'. (64) By 'Orphic' he means the inclination of religious minds 'to see in the significant dream evidence of the innate powers of the soul itself, which it could exercise when liberated by sleep from the gross importunities of the body.' (65) He interprets the meaning of the passage in de Victu as a kind of liberation of soul out of its bodily 'prisonhouse' during sleep, which corresponds to 'Puritan psychology' (as Dodds calls the hardcore of the Orphic and Pythagorean beliefs about the soul). (66) A much more cautious interpretation is presented by P. van der Eijk, who on the one hand recognizes the 'material' nature of soul, on the other hand argues that in sleep soul can 'function independently', (67) and that the author in Chapter 86 'appeals to a rather dualistic conception of the relation between soul and body', (68) and 'presents soul and body as two separate entities which co-operate in the waking state but whose co-operation ends in sleep.' (69)Let me summarize the main features differentiating the account of soul and body in de Victu from the Platonic body-soul dualism. In Plato's Phaedo (and occasionally in other 'middle' dialogues) (a) soul and body belong to different orders of reality or different ontological 'worlds' (b) soul is separable from body and capable of an independent existence; (c) the relationship of soul and body is rather hostile and their junction pathological. The earthly connection of the two is understood as a kind of disease which is cured only by release of soul out of body at the moment of death. Contrary to this, in de Victu (a) both body and soul are mutually interdependent in the same way as fire and water; (86) (b) under specific conditions (e.g., in dreaming) soul is separable from body in its activity, but it can never be separated from the nutrition supplied by body, which means it can never leave its body; and (c) the relationship between soul and body is based on co-operation and mutual interdependence. Any disorder between the two is rendered as pathological, and the aim of any therapeutic intervention is to restore their co-operation.

We have already seen that the author of de Victu often uses the expression psuche to denote certain animating and organizing aspect of a seed or embryo. We have also mentioned his analogy of the two heaps of coal mingling together as an illustration for combining two parental seeds in the process of impregnation. In this section we shall focus on the process of generation in closer detail in order to reveal certain features that bring the theory of de Victu very close to the hardcore of the so-called Orphic-Pythagorean notion of soul, i.e., the idea of the pre-existence of human soul which transmigrates across individual lives, though it is also fundamentally different from that in ways I shall indicate.

Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb in the Ancient Greek World


Faraone, Christopher A.Classical Antiquity; Berkeley Vol. 30, Iss. 1,  (Apr 2011): 1-32.

Timaeus  9 1 b-e and the Hippocratic writers- using fumigations , marry young, repeated sexual intercourse and pregnancy.

also baths, bindings, infusions, 

Aristotle asserted the fixed nature of the womb as did dissections

p 11 They make a different god responsible for each of the different forms of
the complaint (i.e., epilepsy). If the patient imitates a goat, if he grinds
his teeth or suffers convulsions on the right side, they say the Mother of
the Gods is responsible. If he utters a piercing and loud cry, they liken
him to a horse and blame Poseidon. Should he pass some excrement,
as often happens under the stress of the disease, the surname Enodia
(i.e., of Hecate) is applied. If he utters sounds more frequent and thin
like those of birds, it is Apollo Nomios. If he foams at the mouth and
kicks, Ares is to blame. When at night there are fearful things and terrors,
delirium, leaps-from-the-bed and dashes-out-of-doors, they say these are
the assaults of Hecate and the attacks of the heroes.

 p 12 Theriomorphic demons do, in fact, appear in some of the earliest extant
magical amulets, for example, a late fourth-century bce lead tablet from Crete
that orders a dog and she-wolf to flee (pheugein) back to their own homes, a goal
pursued in a number of other Greek expulsion and scapegoat ceremonies in which
demons or off-scourings are transported back to their homes in the barren sea or
desert.53 The first-century bce “Philinna Papyrus” preserves an incantation that
likewise assimilates a headache to a group of similarly predatory animals: “Flee
pain of the head! [Lion] flees under a rock! Wolves flee and single-hooved horses
flee propelled by the blows of my perfect charm!”54 Both of these incantations
belong to an old and widespread Greek incantatory tradition of forcing demons “to
flee” (pheugein) or “to withdraw” (anachoˆroun) from people, houses or towns.55

p 13 In early Greek myth, moreover, stories about mad Io or
the daughters of Proetus being transformed into animals may also derive from a
similar diagnosis, according to which young women suffering from seizures or
madness roar in pain or confusion and their cries are thought to reveal the canine
or bovine identity of the attacking demon.60What, then, is the non-medical cure for such demonic attacks? In the passage
from the Wasps discussed earlier, it is the arrival of a supernatural “protector
from evil” (alexikakos) and a purifier (katharteˆs) of the land, a reference, most
likely, to Heracles.61 According to the author of On the Sacred Disease, however,
the traditional healers of his day claim to cure the disease with “purifications
(katharmoi) and with incantations (epaoˆidai),” as well as by banning baths and
certain kinds of food and clothing.62 He describes, however, only one kind of
purification ritual in detail: the healer smears the patient with blood, washes the
blood off, and then carries the off-scourings away to the mountains or throws them
into the sea, a form of purification that Melampus used to cure the daughters of
Proetus in one version of the story.63

 p14 Fumigation also plays a role in mythological
accounts of the treatment of female madness and seizures. In his parody of the
purification of the daughters of Proetus (who act like dogs during their illness),
the comic poet Diphilus portrays Melampus using a torch, as well as sulfur and
bitumen, and most scholars rightly presume that Melampus was thought to have
fumigated the girls with these two substances.68 According to some versions of
the myth, the daughters of Proetus were driven mad by Hera and their symptoms
recall the Hippocratic description of uterine suffocation and of the Maidens’
Disease.69 There are, in fact, different versions of their eventual cure: in one they
are successfully purified by Melampus, but in another they regain their senses only
after their father dedicates an altar to Artemis.70 There were, then, at least three
etiologies for female spasmodic disease in the classical period: (i) the anger of
a deity (usually Artemis or Hera); (ii) a mechanical problem (e.g., the retention of
the menses or a displaced womb); and (iii) some kind of fearful demonic attack that
causes theriomorphic cries or behavior. Supplicatory sacrifice and prayer are the
traditional cures according to the first explanation; menarche, sexual intercourse,
or the forcible return of the womb by binding, massage, or fumigations according
to the second; and blood-wiping rituals (followed by an apopompeˆ), incantations,
or fumigations according to the third.71









Faraone, Christopher A.Classical Antiquity; Berkeley Vol. 30, Iss. 1,  (Apr 2011)