Triskelli posted:

I just finished reading “The Storm Before the Storm” and was surprised that Marius had surgery on his varicose veins around the time of his seventh consulship. Are there any surviving accounts of how the Romans performed those kinds of operations?

De Medicina VII.31 posted:

1 We next pass from the foregoing subjects to the legs, and if varicose veins occur there, they are removed by a procedure which is not difficult. To this place I have put off also the treatment of the small veins which cause trouble in the head, also of varicose veins on the abdomen, because it is all the same. Any vein therefore which is troublesome may be shrivelled up by cauterizing or cut out by surgery. If a vein is straight, or though crooked is yet not twisted, and if of moderate size, it is better cauterized.

2 This is the method of cauterization: the overlying skin is incised, then the exposed vein is pressed upon moderately with a fine, blunt, hot cautery iron, avoiding a burn of the margins of the incision, which can easily be done by retracting them with hooks. This step is repeated throughout the length of the vein, generally at intervals of four fingers' breadth, after which a dressing is put on to heal up the burns. But excision is done in the following way: the skin is similarly incised over the vein, and the margins held apart by hooks; with a scalpel the vein is separated from surrounding tissue,

3 avoiding a cut into the vein itself; underneath the vein is passed a blunt hook; the same procedure is repeated at the intervals noted above throughout the course of the vein which is easily traced by pulling on the hook. When the same thing has been done wherever there are swellings, at one place the vein is drawn forward by the hook and cut away; then, where the next hook is, the vein is drawn forwards and again cut away. After the leg has thus been freed throughout from the swellings the margins of the incisions are brought together and an agglutinating plaster put on over them.

skasion posted:

Ammian considered himself “miles quondam et Graecus”, a former soldier and a Greek, when writing in the 390s. This is in his explicit, he’s providing his reasons for his apparently not-good-enough Latin prose style, but it demonstrates that a Latin-speaking officer and historian could consider himself a Greek in a meaningful sense past the age of Constantinople.

feedmegin posted:

The meaningful sense might just be geographical and no more though? I'm a West Midlander (in the UK); doesn't mean I feel any connection to the kingdom of Mercia.

feedmegin posted:

The meaningful sense might just be geographical and no more though? I'm a West Midlander (in the UK); doesn't mean I feel any connection to the kingdom of Mercia.

skasion posted:

The story comes from Plutarch who doesn’t elaborate on the method, other than that it involved phlebectomy (i.e. cutting and forcibly pulling the veins out) and that Marius found it so painful he declined to have his other leg done.

However Aulus Cornelius Celsus, writing 100-150 years later, does describe how Roman doctors performed such an operation in his De Medicina.


Which sounds about agonizing enough to explain Marius’ feelings.

Cyrano4747 posted:

My dad is a retired vascular surgeon. Texted him they link and apparently it’s more or less the same procedure today.

Just, you know, with antiseptic and local anesthetic.

Cyrano4747 posted:

My dad is a retired vascular surgeon. Texted him they link and apparently it’s more or less the same procedure today.

Just, you know, with antiseptic and local anesthetic.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I'll need to read up on what the hell Varicose Veins are because good lord...

Epicurius posted:

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. Obviously by 900, they're thinking of themselves as "Roman" and not "Hellene". I'm wondering about the other side of the thing. If the Constitutio Antoniniana gives every free person who lives in the Empire Roman citizenship in 212, but "Greeks" don't start thinking of themselves as "Roman" until post-Constantinople, then why does it take them so long? How do they see themselves in that century after 212 and before 330?

skasion posted:

Kind of stretching the topic a bit, but does anyone have any recommendations for reading about medieval hawking and hunting? I read a pretty cool article this morning about the modern proliferation of wild boar as urban pests across Europe and it made me realize that almost everything I know about medieval boar hunting comes from The Sword in the Stone.

Squalid posted:

athenian history is just jumping from one easily avoidable and unnecessary crisis to the next.

The most impressive thing about Sparta is somehow it made it through the whole classical period without ever being sacked or torched or having their citizens enslaved or anything. I don't know of any other Greek city that can say the same

SimonCat posted:

Did the Spartans ever face off against a Roman Legion or was their heyday over by then?

SimonCat posted:

Did the Spartans ever face off against a Roman Legion or was their heyday over by then?

skasion posted:

Macedonian War is right after the Second Punic. Basically to reassert Roman hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean now that they’re finally hegemons in the central (and western) part. The Spartan war started because the Macedonians gave Sparta control of Argos during the war so as to avoid fighting them as well as Rome, but once Rome won they wouldn’t let Sparta keep it.

Platystemon posted:

The ability of Rome to withstand loss of life was unreal.

A hundred and twenty thousand men drowned off Camarina in the First Punic War.

Sparta didn’t have that many men, women, children, and slaves put together.

feedmegin posted:

Bear in mind that big numbers in ancient sources generally need to be taken with a pinch of salt, though...

skasion posted:

The Secret History has the best chapter titles of any book ever written on any subject, and including Ecce Homo

How Justinian Killed A Trillion People
How He Seized All The Wealth Of The Romans And Threw It Away
How All Roman Citizens Became Slaves
The Sky Tax, And How Border Armies Were Forbidden To Punish Invading Barbarians
Proving That Justinian And Theodora Were Actually Fiends In Human Form
How She Saved Five Hundred Harlots From A Life Of Sin
Other Incidents Revealing Him As A Liar And A Hypocrite

Would that Procopius had treated all Roman history in this way.

skasion posted:

Tbf they’re really good rumors. I don’t know of any other historical figure, Roman or otherwise, of whom it was alleged that she once did a stage show where geese ate corn out of her pussy

quote:

Once, visiting the house of an illustrious gentleman, they say she mounted the projecting corner of her dining couch, pulled up the front of her dress, without a blush, and thus carelessly showed her wantonness. And though she flung wide three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.

Platystemon posted:

Cyrano4747 posted:

Extensive research on noted academic resource youporn.com indicates she was incorrect about the inability of Cupid’s ambassadors to find lodging at her busom.