Abortive Pollution in the Sacred Laws of Cyrene and Kos

Abstract

In the society of the ancient Greece sacred laws on the abortion are a typical example of a mixture between the temple wisdom tradition and the medical τέχνη. The epigraphic discoveries made between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in Cos and Cyrene offered meaningful evidences of the cooperation between priests and physicians to evaluate each single case of abortion and impose the right atonement. This contribution aims at showing how firm the line of continuity between medicine as wisdom and medicine as τέχνη was in the ancient Greece, focusing on the hot topic of the abortion. The question will be analyzed from a multidisciplinary approach which includes history of language, history of medicine and history of religion as the nature of the topic and of the evidences requires.