Salpe was an ancient Greek midwife cited by Pliny the Elder, and a writer of a work called the Paignia mentioned in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae. It is uncertain whether Athenaeus and Pliny discuss the same person, or whether they were two distinct people.
Pliny[edit]
Pliny cites Salpe six times in his Natural History.[1] She is described by him as an obstetrix,[2] though he ascribes general remedies to her, not simply those concerned with women's health.[3] Her remedies only survive in Pliny's references to them, not in her own words.[4] She uses both herbal and magical remedies to cure a variety of ailments including sunburn, stiff or numbed limbs, and dog bites.[4]
Athenaeus[edit]
In the Deipnosophistae, Athenaeus mentions a Salpe as the writer of Paignia.[2] He cites Nymphodorus of Syracuse, probably writing in the third century BC, as claiming that Salpe, the writer of the Paignia, was not a nickname for a Mnaseas, but was a woman from Lesbos.[2]
The Paignia is generally considered to have been a work of pornographic or erotic literature.[5] Athenaeus associates the work with Botrys of Messana, a fifth-century author described as a "shameful writer" by Timaeus.[6] Botrys' work was apparently similar to the pornographic sex-manual attributed to Philaenis.[4] The work was probably written in prose, as Botrys' earlier paignia had been.[7]
James Davidson argues that the Salpe mentioned by Athenaeus and the one cited by Pliny are likely to have been the same person.[8] David Bain has argued against Davidson's suggestion,[9] and I. M. Plant distinguishes between the two in his anthology of ancient women writers.[4] More recently, Rebecca Flemming writes that "despite Bain's objections it remains tempting" to link Pliny's and Athenaeus' Salpe; she suggests that the original Paignia referred to by Athenaeus was the original source of Pliny's recipes, though he would have read them second-hand (or "more probably third- or fourth-hand").[10]
References[edit]
- ^ Davidson 1995, p. 591.
- ^ a b c Davidson 1995, p. 590.
- ^ Flemming 2007, p. 271.
- ^ a b c d Plant 2004, p. 115.
- ^ Davidson 1995, pp. 590–1.
- ^ Flemming 2007, p. 273.
- ^ Bain 1998, p. 265.
- ^ Davidson 1995, p. 592.
- ^ Bain 1998.
- ^ Flemming 2007, p. 274.
Works cited[edit]
- Bain, David (1998). "Salpe's ΠΑΙΓΝΙΑ: Athenaeus 332A and Plin. H. N. 28.38". The Classical Quarterly. 48 (1). doi:10.1093/cq/48.1.262.
- Davidson, James N. (1995). "Don't Try This at Home: Pliny's Salpe, Salpe's Paignia and Magic". The Classical Quarterly. 45 (2): 590–592. doi:10.1017/S000983880004372X. S2CID 170720854.
- Flemming, Rebecca (2007). "Women, Writing and Medicine in the Classical World". The Classical Quarterly. 57 (1): 257–279. doi:10.1017/S0009838807000225. S2CID 171045159.
- Plant, I. M., ed. (2004). Woman Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.