[SCA-AS] [Fwd: TMR 08.01.22 McCabe, A Byzantine Encyclopedia of Horse Medicine (Decker)]

Wed May 7 20:20:14 CDT 2008

This is another book review, of a book that doesn't seem to include the
primary source text in toto, but to discuss it. It may only be relevant to
those who are madly interested in serious research on the care of horses
in period, but I thought I'd pass it along.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: TMR 08.01.22 McCabe, A Byzantine Encyclopedia of Horse Medicine
(Decker)
From:    "The Medieval Review" <tmrl at indiana.edu>
Date:    Mon, January 28, 2008 1:19 pm
To:      tmr-l at indiana.edu
         bmr-l at brynmawr.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

McCabe, Anne. A Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine: The
Sources,
Compilation, and Transmission of the Hippiatrica. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007. Pp. 347. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-927755-1.

    Reviewed by Michael Decker
         University of South Florida
         mdecker at cas.usf.edu

A Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine by Anne McCabe
deals with a
little known work called the Hippiatrica, a handbook for
veterinarians
and horse keepers. The book grew out of McCabe's doctoral thesis, and
she shows full command of the material and a rare combination of
textual facility, technical knowledge (of both manuscripts and their
subjects) and the ability to use these in contextualizing historical
documents.

The study begins with an overview of the Hippiatrica and
immediately
stresses that it, like the Geoponica, the agricultural manual
with
which it is often compared, is the product of two movements. The first
of these is the development of specialized disciplinary knowledge in
the technical arts that we detect over the third through sixth
centuries AD. The second is the trend of scribal excerpting that
occurred in the tenth century, when technical literature was revived in
intellectual circles in Constantinople. Although they were produced in
the rather rarified environment of elite circles in the imperial
center, these books had an utterly practical function. This fact would
be easy to forget, but McCabe does a good job of foregrounding the
various mixtures of real-world needs and literary choices that yield
the text that we have.

The first section, "Manuscripts of the Hippiatrica" is a
discussion of
the twenty-five copies of the twenty-two known manuscripts from five
principal recensions produced from the tenth through the sixteenth
centuries, with edition and English translation of the
Hippiatrica,
both of which are sorely needed.

Following a short discussion of the printed editions and translation of
the text in from the early modern period until today, McCabe devotes a
brief chapter, "The Form of the Hippiatrica" to the question
of why and
how late antique and medieval texts were assembled. The late antique
habit of producing excerpt collections offered the advantage of ease of
use and made a range of material more accessible to users; the
arrangement of such books by subject or alphabetically by author
allowed for ready reference. Those who called for, and often made, such
books were men like Oribasius, who produced a dietary work for the
emperor Julian, or Tribonian, who oversaw the collection of the
Pandects of Justinian two centuries later. McCabe sees such works as
essentially arising out of need: professionals wanted easily usable
reference works. These books were furthermore natural products of a
culture in which learned men deferred to the weight of past authority
while leaving their own marks on the work via selection, arrangement,
and commentary.

Next, the seven major sources of the Hippiatrica are treated
in turn.
Anatolius of Berytus, a fourth-century writer who produced a farming
handbook, is the first of these considered. Anatolius was of primary
importance as a bridge for technical knowledge from antiquity to the
medieval world, living as he did in a pivotal era, and producing a
highly esteemed and widely copied work. His work on farming forms a
large portion of the Geoponica, and his veterinary material was
included not only in the Hippiatrica, but also in the work of the
fifth-century Latin agronomist Palladius. McCabe outlines the work of
Anatolius and its transmission, then discusses his sources, including
Pseudo-Democritus, Julius Africanus, Pamphilus, the Quintilii,
Tarentinus, Florentinus, and Apuleius. Here McCabe grapples with the
difficulty of disentangling the various strands of information that
have flowed into the handbook, many of them from a common source or
group of sources, and often via more than one primary author. We know
so little about many of the ancient authors and their treatises
underlying these technical excerpt-compilations that reconstruction of
specific source traditions is exceedingly complicated. Nevertheless
here, as elsewhere, the reader appreciates McCabe's clear prose and
focus.

The sections that follow fit within the comparative framework
established in the Anatolius chapter. Excerpts of the authors under
consideration are provided in parallel presentation of original and
translation. This permits McCabe to compare the subject author with
other writers contained in the Hippiatric corpus as well as with other
ancient agricultural authorities, particularly Columella and Varro. The
importance of Columella as a nexus of ancient agricultural knowledge is
interesting: he is the major Latin transmitter of the Punic knowledge
of the shadowy Carthaginian Mago, whose huge agricultural handbook was
translated into Latin, then into Greek and continually epitomized and
reworked over the centuries. Recently, Angelo Alvares Carrara has
argued that Mago provides the material not only for the Geoponica, but
the Arabic agronomic handbook, the Nabataean Agriculture. [1]
While
this claim cannot be accepted without further work, the prominence of
Mago within the Hippiatric tradition shows that this body of tradition
possesses considerable promise in the Quellenstudien of agronomic
literature.

Chapters on Eumelus, Apsyrtus, Pelagonius, Theomnestus, Hierocles, and
Hippocrates follow. McCabe provides data on each author from ancient
and medieval notices of them and their work. To these she adds
considerable color through discussion of the distinct manner in which
these men worked, their style, and their respective place within the
veterinary tradition. Internal evidence provides a few clues of
authorship and expertise. From these we learn that the dominant source
of the Hippiatrica Apsyrtus was a military man familiar with the
Danubian lands. In his letters excerpted in the collection, we find
Apsyrtus corresponding with men from around the Mediterranean world,
including men of high rank. We learn further the sorts of works to
which he had access and parallel pursuits that informed his veterinary
practices, such as human medicine and magic.

In these passages we glimpse something of the richness of information
contained in the Hippiatrica. The text offers nuggets of precious
information on a range of subjects, especially the materia medica that
veterinary writers presumed available to the horse doctor, among them
saffron, myrrh, and cassia. Such exotic substances were put to common
uses. They were used to treat wounds or to fumigate stalls. These
practices are echoed in the Geoponica and suggest that the
available
range of exotic substances and experimental nature of treatments were
varied and rich. McCabe has a keen eye for the enlightening, often
humorous anecdotes which frequently reveal precious glimpses of medical
thought, theory, and practice.

In "The Compilation and Evolution of the Hippiatrica" McCabe
tackles
the difficult question of dating the corpus. Scholars have generally
placed the compilation of the Hippiatrica in the tenth century,
specifically the reign of the emperor Constantine VII (913-959).
However, via meticulous study of the major recensions, McCabe argues
cogently for a late antique date of compilation and a tenth-century
revision of the text.

Like the intriguing text she chose as her subject, McCabe's work
touches on many different subjects and will be useful across a range of
scholarly interests. Despite the technical nature of her subject and
the complicated strands of her sources, McCabe handles the project with
aplomb and leads the reader seamlessly through this labyrinth with
clear prose and fine, extensively supported argument. Along the way she
continually displays her depth of learning and love of her subject. A
Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine establishes a new standard
work that will be consulted by those interested in the Hippiatric
corpus as well as those undertaking broader research in the
communication of scientific knowledge and its transmission through the
centuries.

------------------
Notes:

1. Angelo Alvares Carrara, "Geoponica and Nabataean
Agriculture:
A New Approach Into Their Sources and Authorship," Arabic Science and
Philosophy vol.16 (2006), 103-132.

-- 
-- Jenne Heise / Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net