62 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
cases the illness is too strong for medical drugs ( 2. 3 , 6. 364 L.; 11. 6 , 6. 382 L.).
It may be doubted whether the author would regard an appeal to the gods
in such cases as useless. Admittedly, one of his concerns is that epilepsy
should be treated no differently from any other disease; but he nowhere
categorically rejects any appeal to the gods for the healing of hopeless cases.
These remarks may seem speculative and ill-founded, but I will qualify this
issue below.
Thirdly, it is supposed that the wordphusisis used here in the sense of
‘Nature’ or even ‘the laws of Nature’, or in any case of something general
and universal, an all-pervading principle, comparable to the use ofphusisin
Presocratic philosophy, for example in treatises entitled ‘On Nature’ (peri
phuseos ̄). But in the text ofOn the Sacred Diseasethe wordphusisis used
almost exclusively to denote the specific nature or character of the disease
( 18. 2 : ‘each of them has a nature and a power of its own’).^41 Admittedly in
some cases the author makes more general claims concerning the items of
his explanation,^42 but it cannot be maintained that his explanation of the
disease makes explicit use of general patterns or principles like thearchai
of the Presocratic philosophers.
Apart from the question whether these generalisations are justified, there
is evidence from the text itself that it is wrong to attribute such a ‘naturalistic’
theology to the author ofOn the Sacred Disease. In the polemical first
chapter of the treatise, in his objections against the ideas and the practices
of the magicians, we can find several implicit presuppositions which do
not make sense within such a naturalistic conception of the divine. This
applies particularly to the accusations of impiety (asebeia) and atheism
(atheos) which begin in 1. 28 ( 6. 358 L.) and which are continued in 1. 39 ff.
( 6. 362 L.). First, the writer criticises his opponents for making impious
claims, for example that they can influence the movements of sun and
moon and the weather. This claim, the author says, amounts to believing
that the gods neither exist nor have any power, and that what is said to
be divine actually becomes human, since on this claim the power of the
divine ‘is overcome and has been enslaved’ ( 1. 31 , 6. 360 L.:
- )
) by human reason. I do not mean to say that we may infer
from this that the author ofOn the Sacred Diseasebelieves the movements of
the sun and the moon and the weather-phenomena to be manifestations of
divine agency (cf. note 26 above). The hypothetical sentences (note the use
of
in 1. 29 and 1. 31 ) show that he blames his opponents for behaving
(^41) See N ̈orenberg ( 1968 ) 49 – 61 , 80.
(^42) For instance 2. 4 ( 6. 364 L.), 3. 1 ( 6. 366 L.), 18. 5 – 6 ( 6. 396 L.).