(2017) Pharmacology and psychiatry at the origins of Greek medicine: The myth of Melampus and the madness of the Proetides, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 26:2, 193-215,
Melampus is a seer-healer of Greek myth attributed with having healed the young princesses of Argos of madness. Analysis of this legend and its sources sheds light on the early stages of the “medicalizing” shift in the history of ancient Greek medicine. Retrospective psychological diagnosis suggests that the descriptions of the youths’ madness rose from actual observation of behavioral and mental disorders. Melampus is credited with having healed them by administering hellebore. Pharmacological analysis of botanical specimens proves that Helleborus niger features actual neurological properties effective in the treatment of mental disorders. The discussion aims at examining the rational aspects of the treatment of mental conditions in Greco-Roman antiquity.
Melampus is a renowned seer (mantis) and healer of ancient Greek myth. His endeavors are preserved in literary sources from Homer to the Roman Imperial period (eighth century BC – fifth century AD) as well as in later lexicographical tradition.1 Indeed, in the sixth century BC epic poem Melampodia, most of the seers of Greek heroic tradition are credited as being descendants of Melampus (Hesiod, fr. 270–279; Löffler, 1963; Burkert, 1987; Cozzoli, 2007; Flower, 2008; Iles Johnston, 2008). Melampus was born the son of the King of Pylos, Amythaon, and he was cousin to Jason, the famed leader of the expedition of the Argonauts (Apollodorus, Library, 1.9.11, 14 and 16; Diodorus Siculus, 4.68.3–4). The origin of Melampus’ prophetic skills is related particularly in one legend: Melampus reared some youngling snakes from a lair that had been destroyed by his servants and, in gratitude, the snakes “as he slept, purged his ears with their tongues and having fallen in with Apollo […] he was ever after an excellent soothsayer” (Apollodorus, Library, 1.9.11
One renowned episode from the mythical biography of Melampus is the healing of the young daughters of Proetus, the King of Argos (or of Tiryns, according to Bacchylides, Epinician, 11.57–81), known in tradition as the “Proetìdes.”2 When these girls reached the age of marriage, they offended the gods and, thus, were punished with madness, subsequently fleeing from their home and from human society (Marzari, 2010, 2012). Different sources attribute the responsibility for the girls’ madness to different gods: according to Hesiod, it was Dionysus, who the Proetides had angered by refusing to worship him (Catalogue of Women, fr. 131 M.-W.; see Fig. 1). Bacchylides sung instead of the vengeance of Hera, because the princesses had despised (or offended) the richness of her cult-statue (Epinician, 11.42–57; also Apollodorus, Library, 2.2.2); also, Aphrodite is cited among the offended deities (Aelian, Historical Miscellany, 3.42).The measures taken and therapy by which Melampus treated the Proetides vary amongst versions of the myth. According to the most documented tradition, Melampus healed their madness resorting to his skills as a seer: performing prayers, rituals, sacrifices, fumigations, or ablutions in the waters of rivers and springs in which he had cast remedies.4
The mythographer Apollodorus (first to second AD) describes a sort of ritualistic “frenzied dance” performed by Melampus to treat the Proetides but also records that he had been “the first to devise the cure by means of drugs and purifications” (Apollodorus, Library, 2.2.2)One version of the tradition — owing mostly to Greek and Roman medical and naturalistic literature — preserves the notion that Melampus cured the Proetides by administering a specific herbal remedy: hellebore (Hippocrates, Letters, 16; Dioscorides, On Medical Material, 4.162.1; Galen, On Black Bile, 7; Oribasius, Medical Compilations, 7.26.42). Sources even provide details as to which specific variety of the herb was employed by Melampus: black hellebore, according to most accounts, but, according to Galen, the white variety. In the first century AD, Pliny also associates Melampus to hellebore with additional details and rationale:
Melampus is a seer-healer of Greek myth attributed with having healed the young princesses of Argos of madness. Analysis of this legend and its sources sheds light on the early stages of the “medicalizing” shift in the history of ancient Greek medicine. Retrospective psychological diagnosis suggests that the descriptions of the youths’ madness rose from actual observation of behavioral and mental disorders. Melampus is credited with having healed them by administering hellebore. Pharmacological analysis of botanical specimens proves that Helleborus niger features actual neurological properties effective in the treatment of mental disorders. The discussion aims at examining the rational aspects of the treatment of mental conditions in Greco-Roman antiquity.
Melampus is a renowned seer (mantis) and healer of ancient Greek myth. His endeavors are preserved in literary sources from Homer to the Roman Imperial period (eighth century BC – fifth century AD) as well as in later lexicographical tradition.1 Indeed, in the sixth century BC epic poem Melampodia, most of the seers of Greek heroic tradition are credited as being descendants of Melampus (Hesiod, fr. 270–279; Löffler, 1963; Burkert, 1987; Cozzoli, 2007; Flower, 2008; Iles Johnston, 2008). Melampus was born the son of the King of Pylos, Amythaon, and he was cousin to Jason, the famed leader of the expedition of the Argonauts (Apollodorus, Library, 1.9.11, 14 and 16; Diodorus Siculus, 4.68.3–4). The origin of Melampus’ prophetic skills is related particularly in one legend: Melampus reared some youngling snakes from a lair that had been destroyed by his servants and, in gratitude, the snakes “as he slept, purged his ears with their tongues and having fallen in with Apollo […] he was ever after an excellent soothsayer” (Apollodorus, Library, 1.9.11
One renowned episode from the mythical biography of Melampus is the healing of the young daughters of Proetus, the King of Argos (or of Tiryns, according to Bacchylides, Epinician, 11.57–81), known in tradition as the “Proetìdes.”2 When these girls reached the age of marriage, they offended the gods and, thus, were punished with madness, subsequently fleeing from their home and from human society (Marzari, 2010, 2012). Different sources attribute the responsibility for the girls’ madness to different gods: according to Hesiod, it was Dionysus, who the Proetides had angered by refusing to worship him (Catalogue of Women, fr. 131 M.-W.; see Fig. 1). Bacchylides sung instead of the vengeance of Hera, because the princesses had despised (or offended) the richness of her cult-statue (Epinician, 11.42–57; also Apollodorus, Library, 2.2.2); also, Aphrodite is cited among the offended deities (Aelian, Historical Miscellany, 3.42).The measures taken and therapy by which Melampus treated the Proetides vary amongst versions of the myth. According to the most documented tradition, Melampus healed their madness resorting to his skills as a seer: performing prayers, rituals, sacrifices, fumigations, or ablutions in the waters of rivers and springs in which he had cast remedies.4
The mythographer Apollodorus (first to second AD) describes a sort of ritualistic “frenzied dance” performed by Melampus to treat the Proetides but also records that he had been “the first to devise the cure by means of drugs and purifications” (Apollodorus, Library, 2.2.2)One version of the tradition — owing mostly to Greek and Roman medical and naturalistic literature — preserves the notion that Melampus cured the Proetides by administering a specific herbal remedy: hellebore (Hippocrates, Letters, 16; Dioscorides, On Medical Material, 4.162.1; Galen, On Black Bile, 7; Oribasius, Medical Compilations, 7.26.42). Sources even provide details as to which specific variety of the herb was employed by Melampus: black hellebore, according to most accounts, but, according to Galen, the white variety. In the first century AD, Pliny also associates Melampus to hellebore with additional details and rationale:
Some persons […] attribute the discovery of this plant to a shepherd of that name (i.e., Melampus), who remarked that his she-goats were violently purged after browsing upon it, and afterwards cured the daughters of Proetus of madness, by giving them the milk of these goats. (Pliny, Natural History, 25.21.47)
Mental disorders were considered at length among the Greeks and Romans (Harris, 2013). A specific vocabulary for illnesses of the mind and psyche appears as early as the Homeric sources (Perdicoyianni-Paleologou, 2009; Holmes, 2010, p. 43 n.7) and it became more articulated in the course of the classical age, both in medical and nonmedical sources: this vocabulary is the sign of a specific scientific — and even cultural — interest in understanding and categorizing such conditions. For instance, manìa is the most common term for “madness,” a state of “frenzy,” or outrageous “enthusiasm.” But òistros also translates as “madness” but was intended as a “vehement desire” or inappropriate passion (Perdicoyianni-Paleologou, 2009; Thumiger, 2013; Antoni, 2016). Lýssa translates as “rage” or “battle rage” and can indeed be considered a specific form of psychological alteration (Waldner, 2016). Melagcholikòs is an adjective meaning “of melancholic temperament,” which may be likened to “depression”; however, the condition originated from humoral imbalance and hence also translates as “atrabilious” or “choleric” (melàs + cholé, i.e., black bile) (Nutton, 2016b). Diagnosis of an “inflammation of the brain” was defined as phrenìtis. Epilepsy was recognized and described as early as the Babylonian texts and was the specific subject of the Hippocratic De Morbo Sacro(Nutton, 2016a)
Causes of mental illness were generally relegated to the sphere of the supernatural, originating from the gods or from demonic possession. The gods would inflict madness or mental disorders, commonly as a punishment for misdeeds towards moral or religious conventions; similarly, the gods could heal one from those symptoms. Madness is treated in these terms especially in theatre, for example, Euripides (Bacchae, Hyppolitus, 141–144) and Sophocles (Ajax, Trachiniae; Dodds, 1965; Graf, 2015)
On the other hand, already in archaic sources, madness (manìa) may have originated at a more mundane level: from extreme human emotions, such as love or fear. As early as the fifth century BC, a shift towards “rationalization” or “secularization” of mental disease can be recognized, that is, seeking explanations within the human body and psyche rather than in the theological sphere. Harris appropriately speaks of the “medicalization of mental illness” (2013). The fifth- to fourth-century Hippocratic tradition is our paramount evidence for this development (Thumiger, 2013). Indeed, the “medicalization” of Greek neuroscience was pursued by two major schools of thought, which modern scholarship has categorized as “physiological” and “psychological” (Roccatagliata, 1986; Perdicoyianni-Paleologou, 2009)
The “physiological” or “organic” approach explained mental diseases in terms of physical disturbances: According to the so-called “humoral theory” of Greco-Roman physicians, when bodily fluids were interrupted or altered, specific ailments would occur, among which were even psychic conditions and symptoms. Hippocratic physicians directed their inquiries according to this framework from the fifth century BC on. In the first century AD, Aretaeus dedicated a specific chapter in On Madness, treating this aspect of human psychology as a common bodily illness.Differently, the “psychological” approach inquired into mental conditions rather in terms of disturbances of the psyche or “soul” (Gill, 2013
; Hughes, 2013). In the fifth to fourth centuries BC, Plato wrote: “We must agree that folly is a disease of the soul; and of folly there are two kinds, the one of which is madness (manìa), the other ignorance. […] [I]t must be termed ‘disease’ (nòsos)” (Timaeus 86b; see the discussion in Jouanna, 2013)
Given these “medicalized” conceptions of the causes of madness and other mental illnesses, the treatments also shifted towards physical remedies: more commonly, physical constraint, diets, or mental and moral training (Nutton, 2015b); administration of drugs was known, but scholars believe it was rather limited (van der Eijk, 2013; see also Harris, 2013)
These developments in Greek medicine should not be seen as independent one from the other, nor as a teleological evolution of ancient medicine: rather, they were the result of a diversification of rationalistic thought. Indeed, the secularization of madness was paired with a broadening and blurring of its semantics: for instance, Plutarch (first century AD) associated manìa to mental dispositions and feelings as broad as love, anger, and even drunkenness (Plutarch, Amatorius, 16, De Sollertia Animalium, 5, De Garrulitate, 4). Moreover, in parallel to the inquiry of physicians and philosophical schools, religion and tradition remained a hermeneutic tool for the understanding of the human condition: magic, oracular consulting, templar incubation, and Asklepian cult were always staples of Greek and Roman healing practices and the more so of neuroscience. They did indeed flourish in Hellenistic times and should not be understood in a dichotomy to medical practices.Herbal remedies were generally well known in Greco-Roman antiquity (Nutton, 2015a
) and, among them, hellebore was one of the most noteworthy. Its use is widely attested as of fifth-century popular and medical sources (Hünemörder, 2015).6 Alone or as an ingredient in medicinal concoctions, hellebore was associated with the broadest variety of medicinal uses, for example, in skin treatments, as a colic remedy, in curing hydrophobia, alopecia, headaches, epilepsy (Keyser & Irby-Massie, 2008), and also hysterical suffocation (Hippocrates, Diseases of Women, 2.123–126).
One of the more commonly attested prescriptions of hellebore was as a purgative (Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 4.13, On Regimen in Acute Diseases, p. 7; Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, 9.10.2–4; Dioscorides, On Medical Matters, 1.9, 2.75, 4.76, 4.150, 4.151, 4.152, 4.158, 4.171; Pliny, Natural History, 25.21; Aretaeus, On the Therapeutics of Chronic Disease, 2.7). This is also its earliest historical recorded use: in 600 BC, the Athenians would have adulterated the drinking water of Cyrrha with hellebore and were able to take the besieged city unguarded (Pausanias, 10.36.7, 37.7; Robertson, 1978, p. 69 n.5; Girard, 1986, p. 49)The role of hellebore as a cure for madness reported in the narrative on the Proetides is the more pertinent in light of Greek gynecological theories. Hellebore was in fact considered to have emmenagogue and abortive properties and was prescribed in ancient gynecology to ease menstrual blood flow (Dioscorides, On Medical Material, 4.162.2–3) thereby avoiding hematic blockage (Marzari, 2010
). Young girls reaching the age of puberty, such as in the case of the Proetides, were known to be prone to a form of delusion caused by excess blood accumulating in the body because of menarche (see the Hippocratic work, On the Diseases of Virgins; Andò, 1990; Guidorizzi, 1995; Faraone, 1999). Among the symptoms of the Proetides, Hesiod also mentions vitiligo (alphòs), and, in the Corpus Hippocraticum, this sign is described as a humoral outlet (apòstasis) of phlegmatic origin (Epidemics, 2.1.7; On Affections, 35). Hence, it would seem that hellebore would have been a particularly fitting prescription in the case of the Proetides. An excess of phlegm was also believed to be the origin of another two of the ailments attributed to the Proetides: hair loss and itching (knùos). Thanks to its purgative properties, hellebore was indeed recommended for eliminating excessive phlegm and restoring humoral balance. In addition, as a cataplasm, hellebore was used against alphòs and other kinds of dermatosis (Marzari, 2015).Hellebore is also documented as a cure for madness and neurological conditions in a great deal of Greek and Latin nonmedical and nonscientific sources. Indeed, the first attestation of its use can be traced to Aristophanes’ play The Wasps, performed in Athens in 422 BC (Aristophanes, Wasps, 1488f; see also Demosthenes, On the Crown, 18.121; Plautus, Pseudolus, 4.7.80–85, Rudens, 4.3.70–74; Horace, Satires, 2.3.82; Svetonius, Caligula, 29; Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales, 6.7. [Morals 693a]; Epictetus, Discourses, 2.15.14). The association of hellebore to cure insanity seems to have been so commonplace throughout Greco-Roman culture that advising one to “take some hellebore” was a proverbial expression implying they were speaking or acting foolishly or outrageously (Thomson, 1835, p. 811; Botsford & Sihler, 1915, p. 523). Moreover, according to Pliny, “studious men are in the habit of taking hellebore for the purpose of sharpening the intellectual powers, it is known as a cure for epilepsy, and in combination with radicula […] to act as a sternutatory, and are both of them productive of narcotic effects” (Natural History, 25.21.51–53).
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