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Volume 12, Number 3
Special Article
The Many Faces of Hippocrates: The Effects of Culture on a Classical Image
A. Diamandopoulos, A.H. Diamandopoulos, and S. Marketos
People of succeeding ages and cultures admire (and so venerate) famous men. They wish (in a sense) to make them their own and, in so doing, become comfortable with them. Therefore, their artists adapt their images giving them the rank, position, clothing and accouterments of revered figures, native to that culture.
Pictorial representations of famous persons offer some indication of the impact these persons had on the intellectual and moral life of the societies that created these illustrations. Most observers accept this statement when it refers to religious or political leaders; however, few have studied the wide spectrum of artistic representations of men of science. Such representations follow two different trends. One emphasizes the standard characteristics of these personalities: for example, the piety, benevolence, and wisdom of Christ as healer and those of Asclepios are represented alike. The second trend presents these personalities according to the fashion of a specific period, using local costumes and craftsmanship. The combination of these two trends creates images that have great stability and familiarity. Generally, the depiction of famous personalities in the fashion of any historical period does not imply that these persons were regarded as fellow citizens who shared all the beliefs and thoughts of these societies. It reflects only the tendency for storytelling that was especially strong in the Middle Ages. Using this narrative technique, people tried to make a connection with philosophers and scientists whom they admired, and whose theories were known to them. Although these artistic manipulations of the likeness of famous personalities may provoke criticism, these adjustments do not do any harm. After all, these images are symbols and not naturalistic portraits. In them, the faithful see reflected the genius they admire; they also remind viewers, for example, of the teachings of Hippocrates, even if few of the viewers have read his texts.
This paper comments on the various representation of Hippocrates produced in different ages and by various cultures. The authors aim to show that the image of Hippocrates has survived for 2500 years because it has attained the status of a symbol whose effectiveness does not require an exact likeness, or an intimate knowledge of his writings. In doing this, we present a number of artistic representations from both the Western and Eastern worlds, and from antiquity to the present day. The image of Hippocrates has undergone a variety of metamorphoses and translations, in art as well as in the academic literature. This continuous transformation of the Hippocratic image resembles the changes that have overtaken the Ovidian Metamorphoses. In Ovid's poem, magical (and in the present case, artistic) change is tied closely to a transforming spirit in the real world of cosmos, society, and human personality. Yet, balanced against all these changes is a constant and even heroic endeavor: despite the universal world of change, Ovid declares that he will write an everlasting poem - a perpetuum carmen - a claim to which he returns with a deeper, perhaps tragic sense at the end, when the notion of anything perpetuum has become doubtful. Likewise, our world no longer endorses unanimously the 'eternal' values of Hippocratic morals. Still, these opening lines* establish two themes that continue throughout Ovid's work: constant change and a unified eternal theme.1 The same elements are found in the artistic images of Hippocrates.
*In nova fert animus mutates dicere formas corpora: di, coeptis (nam vos mutates et illas) adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmeni (1.1 - 4)
My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms. Ye gods, for you yourselves have wrought changes, breathe on these my undertakings, and bring down my song in unbroken strains from the world's very beginning even unto the present time.
The most ancient surviving representation of the Father of Medicine is a fifth-century BC coin from the island of Cos, probably minted while Hippocrates was still alive and teaching on the island. The years that followed produced an abundance of statues, busts, and coins that were made during the Greco-Roman period. Probably the most authentic of these, a Roman copy of a Greek bust that was found in Ostia in 1940, is now housed in the Museo della via Ostiense in Rome. Another statue found in Cos and housed in the same museum is said to represent Hippocrates, although some authorities have expressed doubts concerning its identity. From the same island comes a Roman mosaic that shows Asclepios' arrival on the island: he is welcomed by Hippocrates on the right, and a boatman on the left. In all these classical works of art, Hippocrates is represented as a noble and gentle wise man. In this Hellenistic era, those qualities were appreciated, and generally, the people regarded philosophers and political leaders as a special breed who displayed the characteristics of nobility and wisdom.
In contrast to Asclepios whom Christian dogma sought to demean because, in his capacity as Christus Medicus, he was seen as a rival to Jesus, Hippocrates was accepted as a nonreligious 'neutralized' source of secular truth by Christian apologists. However, religious correctness did not prevent the creation of transvestite images. The artists depicted ancient Greek gods and philosophers in clerical robes. For example, a sixteenth-century mural in the narthex of Philantropinoi Monastery, on the island of Ioannina in northwestern Greece, depicts Sollo, Aristoteles, Plutarch, Thucidides, and Chilo as prophets and as Christian saints. This artistic anachronism offered benefit to all parties concerned. The ancient philosopher was made acceptable to Christian viewers who were conditioned to accept truth only in terms of Christian doctrine. The Church also benefited, because this kind of presentation emphasized that only members of clergy could enunciate wisdom; pagans or heretics could not do so even if they were skilled physicians. Also, these artists had no obligation to undertake research into authentic forms of ancient dress in order to depict an ancient persona. It was enough to dress the honoured figure in current, luxurious garments. A twelfth-century illuminated manuscript now at Mount Athos presented Jupiter in the robes of a Christian Emperor.
Two examples in our series are relevant to medicine. The first, a twelfth-century AD illustration from the codex Medicina Antiqua, shows Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, dressed as a Father of the Church. Similarly the second, well-known illustration shows Hippocrates as a noble Byzantine philosopher; this was painted for the frontispiece of a fourteenth-century medical treatise by Ioannis Actuarius and was dedicated to his friend, the Grand Duke John Apocaucos. This book gave Hippocrates' portrait a prominent place because of a revival of interest in ancient Greek civilization during that period. On the walls of Byzantine monasteries, even on those of the twelfth-century Anagni Cathedral in Italy, Hippocrates and Galen were shown as sages, foretelling the truths of the Christian universe. In an early Renaissance symphonia, in the company of Aristotle and Plato, they talked and played together.2 Similar to the treatment of religious paintings and those of Hippocrates in the same twelfth-century, in the Anagni Cathedral, pairs of evangelists are depicted in the same style as are Hippocrates and Galen. In a twelfth-century illuminated Codex, now at Mount Athos, St. Luke the Evangelist, the virtuous physician of the New Testament, is painted on par with St. Mark the Evangelist. In the Middle Ages, Hippocrates was accorded the same qualities as the wise men of antiquity.
Probably the best example of the close connection in people's minds between Hippocrates and a Christian saint is a Christian version of his celebrated oath in the form of a cross, as if the oath was an item of sacred dogma. In this type of illustrated text, mainly poems, which commonly are called carmina figurata, the lines were arranged to form the silhouette of an object. The first examples of this kind in Europe were in the Greek preclassical literature and examples abound in the Hellenistic era. In the tenth century, several of them were included in a collection of Greek epigrams, now referred to as Anthologia Palatina; the thirteenth century saw a revival of interest in these forms.3 Several examples of cross-like writings survive either as an illustration in the main body of the text as signatures, or as an ending to the manuscript. Examples of these are found in the twelfth-century copy of the Homilies of Saint John Damascen in the library of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, and the Codex Garrett, housed in the Princeton University Library, in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.
A sixteenth-century statue of Hippocrates stands in a niche at the Bologna University in Northern Italy; it is in classical style, as classicism was expressed during that era. Artistically, the marble decorations in the Palladian Theatre in Vincenza, close to Bologna, are similar to this. The centuries that followed--the seventeenth and eighteenth - saw the birth and growth of Neo-Hippocrati sin. This movement, of whom the Englishman, Thomas Sydenham, was a basic supporter, was reaction against the excessively mechanistic medical thought of the seventeenth century. This concept, which has undergone wide fluctuations in popularity, is still alive and active. A seventeenth-century image of Hippocrates was engraved by Paulus Pontius after a drawing Peter Paul Rubens made from an ancient bust. Gone are the clerical robes and the saintly postures: the High Renaissance chose an 'authentic' handsome and noble visage for the Father of Medicine.
However, the Hippocrates likeness suffered most in the East; some Eastern images of him are quite different from our understanding of the true person. The first was copied from an Islamic manuscript that is now in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. The image of the Greek doctor, wearing a Turkish costume and standing between multicoloured Islamic decorations and dragons, illustrates the metamorphosis that Greek philosophy and science had undergone in the Islamic world. The second Eastern image comes from Tibet: again Hippocrates is shown as a wise clergyman - a presentation that is acceptable to a theocratic state but still embodies Western ideas. Beginning in the eighteenth century, Western medicine had infiltrated Japan slowly but steadily and, in spite of a few reverses, had fully established itself there. A Japanese portrait of Hippocrates illustrates the alterations that scientific medicine had to undergo to be accepted in the "Land of the Rising Sun".
If we try to modify the image of Hippocrates in the manner of a cultural anthropologist, we might destroy the entire basis of the Hippocratic tradition. As has been pointed out frequently, in some sense, the god always 'reflects' the worshipper, taking on the colour of his habits, his thoughts, and his social conditions.4
If we could draw a parallel between the Hippocratic perceptions of the artist and an element of the real world, we might suggest, as an analogy, the "Hippocrates" plane tree in Cos. We do not know how old it is or if it is the original tree under which Hippocrates taught his pupils or a descendant of it. Beside it, the locals built a spring with ancient Greek and Ottoman marble fragments - a worshipful act that completes the impulse to dendrolatry (tree-worship) and hydrolatry (water-worship), and recalls to mind Hippocrates' work "On Waters " However, in spite of all those deviations from the archeological correctness, the legend of the tree, like various images of Hippocrates, perpetuates feelings of reverence, continuity, and tranquility. Similarly, despite any anatomic or physiognomic deviations, the pictorial representations of the Father of Medicine testify to the impact of Hippocrates on worldwide medical thought. The human mind tends to understand higher ideas better when they are embodied in an anthropomorphic form. Thus, it is that the image of Hippocrates, although often modified by artistic substitution, has been widely adopted as a model through which to commemorate the time-honoured virtues of medicine.
From this review of 18 depictions of Hippocrates as seen by artists of many cultures and time periods, we have concluded that his adoption as a symbol of veneration reflects the acceptance of his moral and scientific teaching by those ages and cultures. We know of no other nonreligious teacher of antiquity who continues to enjoy such a reputation or influence as does Hippocrates.5
References
- Barkan L. The Gods made flesh., Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 20
- Nutton V. From Galen to Alexander. Aspects of medicine and medical practice in Late Antiquity. In: Scarborough J, ed. Symposium on Byzantine Medicine. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, 1984: 5
- Weitzmann K. Classical heritage in the art of Constantinople. In: Archeologica Orientalis, in Memoriam. Ernst Hezzfeld, Locust Valley, New York, 1952: 149
- Harrison J. Themis. Merlin Press, London, 1989: 28
- Nutton V. Inaugural Lecture, University College London, 1995 (personal communication)
Correspondence and reprint requests: Prof A.A. Diamadopoulos, St. Andrew's State Hospital, Romanou Village, 26500 Patras, Greece
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