When Love Ails: Lovesickness and the Authenticity of Emotions in Plautus’ Cistellaria

Jelena  Todorović

doi:10.5937/acthist44-62373

Jelena Todorović University of British Columbia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5937/acthist44-62373

Keywords: Mental Disorders, Emotions, History of Medicine, Amor, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Aretaeus, Lovesickness, Plautus, Roman Comedy, Ancient Medical Thought, Gender and Emotion, Medical Humanities, Disability and Affect

Abstract

This paper examines the first extant instance of the medicalization of love in Roman literature. In Plautus’ Cistellaria, love is not just conceived through a conventional comic lens of erotic desire but as a psychosomatic disorder, expressed through symptoms that blur the boundary between mental disturbance and bodily illness. The analysis shows how Plautus integrates medical and popular knowledge to construct a model of amor that ancient audiences could recognize as pathological.

This medicalization of passion serves a distinctly literary purpose: by grounding emotion in physical and cognitive symptoms, Plautus grants psychological depth and credibility to his protagonists. The authority of medical thought thus legitimizes what comedy typically trivializes, sincere feeling and genuine distress. Cistellaria emerges as a case study in how Roman literature appropriated scientific discourse to substantiate and shape narrative coherence. The study situates this medicalization of passion within broader ancient discourses on disease and affects, revealing how Plautus’ comedy participates in the cultural translation of medical knowledge.

References

Campbell DA. Greek Lyric. Vol. 1. Sappho and Alcaeus. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 1982. (Loeb Classical Library). Sappho, fr. 31.

Thumiger C. Mad Erôs and eroticized madness in tragedy. In: Sanders E, Thumiger C, Carey C, Lowe N, editors. Erôs in Ancient Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2013. p. 27–40.

Plato. Phaedrus. Lamb WR, translator. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 2022. (Loeb Classical Library; 166). Section 265a–b.

Plato. Timaeus. Bury RG, translator. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 1929. (Loeb Classical Library; 234). Section 86b–d.

Aristotle. Problems. Vol. 2. Books 20–38; Rhetoric to Alexander. Mayhew R, Mirhady DC, translators. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 2011. (Loeb Classical Library; 317). Section 30.1.953b35.

Soranus. Gynaeciorum libri IV; De signis fracturarum; De fasciis; Vita Hippocratis secundum Soranum. Ilberg J, editor. Leipzig: In aedibus B.G. Teubneri; 1927. (Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana LXXIV, 7).

Plutarch. Lives. Vol. 9. Demetrius and Antony; Pyrrhus and Gaius Marius. Perrin B, translator. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 1920. (Loeb Classical Library; 101). Section 38.2–9.

Heliodorus. An Aethiopian History of Heliodorus. Underdown T, translator. Saintsbury G, editor. Travers HMO, illustrator. London: Chapman and Dodd; 1924. Section 4.7

Appian. Roman History. White H, translator. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 1912. (Loeb Classical Library; 3). Book XI, Chapters 59–61.

Ribeiro LFC. Your love is like bad medicine: the medical tradition of lovesickness in the legends of Hippocrates and Erasistratus of Ceos. Akroterion. 2020 65:63–88.

Salas LA. Why lovesickness is not a disease: Galen’s diagnosis and classification of psychological distress. Transactions of the American Philological Association (TAPA). 2022 152:507–539.

Pigeaud F. De l’âme et du corps: la maladie de l’âme. Étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradition edico-philosophique antique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres; 1981.

Mazzini I. Il folle da amore. In: Tedeschi A, Cipriani G, Mazzini I, Fedeli P, Alfonso S, editors. Il poeta elegiaco e il viaggio d’amore: dall’innamoramento alla crisi. Bari: Edipuglia, Università di Bari; 1990. p. 39–83.

Mazzini I. Malattia melanconica da amore tra poesia e medicina nel tardo antico: Aegritudo Perdiccae (Ae.P.). Medicina nei Secoli Arte e Scienza. 2012 24(3):559–584.

McNamara L. Hippocratic and non-Hippocratic approaches to lovesickness. Studies in Ancient Medicine. 2016 46:308–327.

Euripides. Hippolytus. Kovacs D, translator. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press; 1995. (Loeb Classical Library; 484). Lines 38–40; 169-176.

Paschall DM. The Vocabulary of Mental Aberration in Roman Comedy and Petronius. Baltimore (MD): Linguistic Society of America; 1939.

Aretaeus of Cappadocia. Of the Causes and Signs of Acute and Chronic Diseases. Reynolds TF, translator. London: Pickering; 1837. Section I.V. Available from: https://archive.org/details/b2931074x/page/n3/mode/2up.

Galen. On Prognosis = De praecognitione. Nutton V, editor, translator, commentary. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; 1979. (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, Vol. V, 8, 1).

Zagagi N. Tradition and originality in Cistellaria: the characterization of Selenium and Alcesimarchus as comic lovers. In: Hartkamp R, Hurka F, editors. Studien zu Plautus’ Cistellaria. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag; 2004. p. 167–186.

Harris WV. The rage of women. Yale Classical Studies. 2003 32:121–143.

Galen. On the Passions and Errors of the Soul = De propriorum animi cuiuslibet affectuum dignotione et curatione. Harkins PW, translator. Riese W, introduction and interpretation. Columbus (OH): Ohio State University Press; 1963. Section 5.2-3 Based on: Galeni de propriorum animi cuiuslibet affectuum dignotione et curatione. de Boer W, editor. Leipzig: Teubner; 1937. (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum; Vol. V, 4, 1, 1).

Stockert W, editor. Cistellaria. Munich: C.H. Beck; 2012.

Chiarini G. Pazzie d’amore e differenze sociali nella Cistellaria. In: Hartkamp R, Hurka F, editors. Studien zu Plautus’ Cistellaria. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag; 2004. (ScriptOralia; 128. ScriptOralia Reihe A, Altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe; 35). p. 117–124.