A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity explores 1,750 years of the history of the West, from Homer to the end of the first millennium CE. This span of time includes three major eras of Greek civilization, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire until its collapse in the 5th Century CE, and Medieval Europe up to the transition to the High Middle Ages. Key issues include the invention of the nude as a cultural icon, the early development of Western medicine, and formative discourses about the identity and ethical management of the body.

A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with essays on the centrality of the human body in birth and death, health and disease, sexuality, beauty and concepts of the ideal, bodies marked by gender, race, class and disease, cultural representations and popular beliefs, and self and society.

Table of contents

Illustrations
Series Preface

Introduction
Daniel H. Garrison, Northwestern University, USA

1 "The End is to the Beginning as the Beginning is to the End": Birth, Death, and the Classical Body
Valerie M. Hope, Open University, UK

2 Health and Disease
Patrick MacFarlane, Providence College, Rhode Island, USA

3 Sex
Marilyn B. Skinner, University of Arizona in Tucson, USA

4 Medical Knowledge and Technology
Brooke Holmes, Princeton University, USA

5 Popular Beliefs about the Human Body in Antiquity
Page duBois, University of California, San Diego, USA

6 Reflections on Erotic Desire in Archaic and Classical Greece
Froma I. Zeitlin, Princeton University, USA

7 Marked Bodies: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability, and Disease
Brooke Holmes, Princeton University, USA

8 Marked Bodies: Divine, Human, and Bestial
Marguerite Johnson, The University of Newcastle, Australia

9 The Body of a Hero: Images of Herakles and Their Political Use in Antiquity
Amalia Avramidou, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

10 The Self from Homer to Charlemagne
Marc Mastrangelo, Dickinson College, Carlisle, USA

Notes
Bibliography
Contributors
Index