52 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
below). Among the ‘human’ factors determining the disease we should
probably also reckon the individual’s constitution (phlegmatic or choleric:
2. 4 – 5 , 6. 364 L.; 5. 1 , 6. 368 L.), which depends on peculiarities and degrees
of prenatal and postnatal ‘purgation’ (ch. 5 ), the individual’s age (chs. 8 – 9 ),
the left or right side of the body (ch. 10 ), the length of time which has
elapsed since the beginning of the disease (ch. 11 ), and a few minor variable
factors which the author mentions in the course of his medical account of
epilepsy.
A difficulty of this view is that not all of these factors seem to be accessible
to human control or even influence, so that this connotation ofanthr ̄opinos
seems hardly applicable here. A man’s constitution, for instance, is deter-
mined from his birth ( 5. 1 ff., 6. 368 ff. L.) and seems hardly capable of being
influenced by human agency (although there is no reason why even this
could not be thought to be changeable by means of diet – but the text does
not discuss this). Yet perhaps another association of the oppositiontheios–
anthr ̄opinoshas prompted the author to use it here, namely the contrast
‘universal–particular’, which also seems to govern the use oftheiosin the
Hippocratic treatiseOn the Nature of the Woman.^19
However, this interpretation is based upon several assumptions and pre-
suppositions deserving consideration.
Firstly, the meaning of the wordphusisand the reason for mentioning it
in all three passages remains unclear. If, as is generally supposed,^20 phusis
andprophasisare related to each other in thatphusisis the abstract concept
andprophasisthe concrete causing factor (prophasiesbeing the concrete
constituents of thephusisof a disease), then the mention of the wordphusis
does not suffice to explain the sense in which the disease is to be taken as
divine, for the nature of a disease is constituted by human factors as well.
It is the fact that some of the constituents of the nature of the disease are
themselves divine which determines the divine character of the disease.
Secondly, in the sentence ‘it derives its divinity from the same source
from which all the others do’ ( 2. 1 : "3 $ ($
" 5
(^19) On the Nature of the Woman 1 ( 7. 312 L.); cf. Ducatillon ( 1977 ) 202 – 3. I refrain from a systematic
discussion of the concept of the divine in other Hippocratic writings, partly for reasons of space but
also because such a discussion would have to be based on close analysis of each of these writings
rather than a superficial comparison with other texts. Besides, it is unnecessary or even undesirable
to strive to harmonise the doctrines of the various treatises in the heterogeneous collection which
the Hippocratic Corpus represents, and it is dangerous to use the theological doctrine of one treatise
(e.g. the supposedly divine character of climatic factors inOn the Sacred Disease) as evidence in
favour of an interpretation of the wordtheiosin another treatise (e.g.Prognostic; on this see n. 30
below). For general discussions see Thivel ( 1975 ); Kudlien ( 1974 ); and Norenberg ( ̈ 1968 ) 77 – 86.
(^20) See N ̈orenberg ( 1968 ) 64 – 7 ; Lloyd ( 1979 ) 26.