Horse health in ancient societies
Horses played an important social, cultural and economic role in ancient society, and they were treated with a great deal of care and attention when they fell ill. The Hippiatrica brings together prescriptions for treating different ailments, now Dr Elisabet Göransson is working to bring them to a wider audience.
The horse played an important role in ancient societies, helping to plough fields, transport goods and supply armies for instance, and their health was a correspondingly major concern. The Hippiatrica, a collection of ancient Greek texts by several different authors, was created around the fifth century and translated into Latin at a relatively early stage, then copied and spread more widely beyond the Mediterranean basin. The collection outlines a number of prescriptions for treating various different ailments in horses. “Most of the prescriptions are very short lists of what materials should be mixed together to treat a horse,” outlines Dr Elisabet Göransson, Associate Professor in Latin at Lund University. As manager of a project funded by the Swedish Research Council, Dr Göransson is now working with her colleagues - the Greek scholar, Dr Britt Dahlman, Dr Paul Linjamaa, who researches history of religion, and the IT expert Kenneth Berg - to bring attention to the sources through a relational database. “There has been renewed interest recently in hippiatric processes in early history. However, the Hippiatrica is not yet available in English,” she explains.
terms. “You may have to consult a botanist for example, or carefully look up different kinds of chemical substances, so translating these prescriptions can take time,” she continues. “Sometimes magical elements like spells were also added to a prescription.”
A number of the prescriptions include substances that were used on human patients, such as anti-inflammatories, while others may seem more surprising or unconventional to a modern reader. However, over time there was a kind of sifting process, and prescriptions became increasingly knowledge-based. “We see in later
“You may have to consult a botanist for example, or carefully look up different kinds of chemical substances, so translating these prescriptions can take time.”
Translating texts
This is an issue Dr Göransson aims to address, working alongside her colleague Dahlman to translate some of the texts in the collection from Latin and Greek into English for the first time, which will then be made available - along with transcriptions of manuscripts and earlier editions - through a relational database that is being developed in the project. The project’s research is focused on the work of two authors - the veterinarians Apsyrtos and Pelagoniusand translating their work is no easy task, as the texts are organised in different ways and some of the prescriptions include fairly obscure herbs and substances. “Some of these herbs and plants are mentioned only in these texts,” says Dr Göransson. This is called a hapax legomenon in philology, and Dr Göransson says further research is typically required to translate these
manuscripts that the more extreme prescriptions, some including magic spells, have not been copied,” outlines Dr Göransson. The work of translating these highly fluid texts is still in progress, and they will be made available through a multi-lingual relational database that will be hosted by the Swedish Institute in Rome. “This database is designed for investigating fluid text relations, which is one of our specialities here at Lund,” says Dr Göransson. “If for example you’re interested in something concerned with a magic spell, or a particular type of herb, then you can just search for it and the results will be returned.”
This work builds on the previous development of the Monastica database (see separate info box), which gives researchers access to certain monastic texts. The Hippiatrica database will be a similarly valuable source of information for students
and researchers interested in how horses were treated in late antiquity, believes Dr Göransson. “There is a lot of interest in this project. We are trying to design this database so that it will be easy to access, including for people from outside the academic sector,” she says. The database will be launched in 2025, and it could provide a kind of template for the future development of databases of fluid texts. “We have a lot of documentation which could be very useful for setting up a database of fluid texts. We think that now is the time to make this more widely available,” continues Dr Göransson.
Monastica - https://monastica.ht.lu.se/ - is an open access digital platform built on a complex relational My SQL database, presenting the transmission of Sayings of the Desert Fathers, and other early monastic literature. Fluid textual traditions in ten different languages can be studied through transcribed manuscripts, previous editions, and modern translations.
KnowlEDGE , MaG ic an D Hors E M ED icin E in l aTE a n T iqui T y Elisabet Göransson
The Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology Centre for Theology and Religious Studies LUX, Lund University Box 192 SE-221 00 LUND
E: elisabet.goransson@ctr.lu.se w: https://projekt.ht.lu.se/hippo/
Elisabet Göransson, is an Associate Professor in Latin at Lund University, Sweden. She specializes in textual scholarship with a focus on more complex, “fluid” text traditions and ways to make such texts known and better studied. Working with early manuscripts and also teaching both Latin, palaeography and courses on textual criticism and digital tools and resources for the study of textual scholarship and textual traditions. She has been part of a number of externally funded projects and started a network on textual scholarship.
