Imagine being a doctor whose patients literally think you’re trying to poison them. This is the surprising reality many Greek physicians faced in Ancient Rome. Sure, the Roman Republic conquered Greece on the battlefield, but Greek culture survived and conquered Rome right back, especially when it came to science and health.
Nonetheless, this was far from a smooth transition. The Romans desperately needed the medical expertise of the Greeks. Yet for a long time, they absolutely despised them for it. It was a messy clash of cocky cultures that, surprisingly, is similar to how modern societies occasionally treat immigrant professionals today.
Examples of Greek physicians in Ancient Rome
The story really shines with a man named Archagathus. According to Pliny the Elder, this immigrant doctor showed up in Rome from the Peloponnese sometime in the late third century BC. Initially, the Romans loved him. The Senate practically rolled out the red carpet, granting him citizenship and even buying him a storefront on the taxpayers’ dime so he could set up his medical shop.
However, that honeymoon phase was remarkably short-lived. Up until then, Roman medicine mostly consisted of the head of the family handing out gentle herbal remedies. Archagathus brought a very different culture: Hellenistic surgery. This included aggressive incisions and red-hot cauterizing irons. Unsurprisingly, this completely horrified the Roman public, which began referring to him as carnifex, or the executioner.
To understand that hostile turn, we have to look at how early Romans saw themselves. They were fiercely proud of being tough, self-reliant farmers. Taking care of your family’s health was an inside job, handled by the male head of the household using old-school herbs and a few prayers. It was a matter of pride that didn’t allow much space for a Greek, who did all sorts of strange things to their bodies.
Cato the Elder is another great example. He was basically the poster boy for stubborn Roman traditionalism, and he was convinced he could cure just about anything from a broken bone to an upset stomach with nothing more than a cabbage. He was genuinely obsessed with cabbages!
Cato looked at these doctors with their fancy theories and saw a corrupting luxury that would make Romans soft. He even wrote a completely unhinged letter to his son, Marcus, according to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (Book 29, Chapter 7), claiming the Greeks were a vile race that had sworn a blood oath to murder all citizens of Rome under the guise of their physicians’ so-called medical treatment. His words, as reported by Pliny, are worth remembering:
“I will speak to you more at length on the befitting occasion about those Greeks, my son Marcus. I will show you the results of my own experience at Athens, and that, while it is a good plan to dip into their literature, it is not worthwhile to make a thorough acquaintance with it. They are a most iniquitous and intractable race, and you may take my word as the word of a prophet, when I tell you that whenever that nation shall bestow its literature upon Rome it will mar everything; and that all the sooner, if it sends its physicians among us. They have conspired among themselves to murder all barbarians with their medicine; a profession which they exercise for lucre, in order that they may win our confidence, and dispatch us all the more easily. They are in the common habit, too, of calling us barbarians, and stigmatize us beyond all other nations, by giving us the abominable appellation of Opici [an insulting term for an uncultured rustic]. I forbid you to have anything to do with physicians.”
On top of that, conservative Romans found the whole idea of charging money to heal someone incredibly tacky, comparing it to prostitution.
The eventual victory of Greek doctors
That said, practicality usually eventually wins out over prejudice. As Rome exploded into a massive global superpower, patching up its citizens and large numbers of deployed soldiers required a bit more than cabbage leaves and wishing for the best.
It took some smart PR to turn things around and change centuries-old prejudices. Brilliant practitioners like Asclepiades of Bithynia began winning people over with much gentler treatments. He ditched the scalpels in favor of prescribing wine, warm baths, and soothing massages. Who wouldn’t sign up for that? Fast forward to the second century AD, and we have Galen of Pergamon serving as the personal physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Galen’s anatomical research was so groundbreaking that it basically became the medical playbook for the next 1,500 years.
What is worth noting here is the undeniable modern parallel. Look at developed nations like the US or the UK today. Immigrant doctors are the absolute backbone of public healthcare systems, yet they often have to live through intense political pushback. The awkward dance of relying on foreign expertise while clinging to anti-immigrant sentiments is clearly nothing new.
At the end of the day, the story of these ancient healers highlights something pretty fundamental about human nature: medicine is at the heart of every society.
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
