Academic Advertising and I Really Should be Writing

 "...I need a suitable publicity image that captures the gist of your seminar. It needs to be c. 1 MG in size and free of copyright restrictions."

I was not prepared for this request earlier this year after I had agreed to present an updated version of a paper I had presented remotely last year at a conference devoted to Pliny the Elder's discussions of medicine and magic for a Friday afternoon seminar. This paper, "Tying One On: An Archaeological Re-Examination of Pliny's Attitude Towards 'Medical Amulets,'" is pretty much me formulating spreadsheets to illustrate how Pliny discussed remedies which were tied onto a patient. Not exactly something which immediately brings interesting images to mind.

Now I must be honest, I am writing this blog to get me back into the habit of writing. I have been spending a lot of time on arts and crafts since before Christmas, and I now have this seminar to present along with a book chapter based upon it, as well as another presentation for students on the Alexander Romance. I really need to get my writing mojo up and running. 

And then I was asked to source a picture of interest without copyright restrictions for a very niche topic. 

I could not find a darn thing. 

After two hours of fruitless searches, I decided it was time to create an image. So all my time spent on arts and crafts weren't really wasted. 

~~~

It never occurred to me to plug my search terms into one of the new AI image generators. I have moral objections to the way they have been trained, but now I am curious as to what it might create for comparative purposes.

... *ten minutes later* ...

Well, using Canva's AI image generator, I got nothing. I am glad I didn't try to use that when I was looking before.

~~~

So, I abandoned looking online and instead reviewed the descriptions of a number of Pliny's "medical amulets" and started searching my cupboards and garden. 

Firstly, I used some scrap material which was heading for the bin when I snavelled it for craft purposes. This would be my photo's background.

From cupboards I got coral and a dried seahorse all of which was obtained by my family in the early 1980s when on a family holiday to Townsville. We all feel bad about having these things now, but they were acquired more than 40 years ago when we knew no better. Please don't judge us poorly, we wouldn't buy these things now, but we have kept this stuff as the damage has already been done. Also, why was a shop selling dried seahorses? (As an aside, I once saw hippopotamus teeth for sale in the window of a store in the back streets of Rome - it is one of my regrets that I did not photograph it, but it was before digital photography.)

I took a sea sponge from my watercolour paint set. I pulled out a little muslin bag and small metal box I had made for another project but did not use. I also grabbed some mustard seeds for visual interest and wrote the Greek letters Rho and Alpha on a scrap of paper.

I tied some knots in a length of crochet cotton that I use for Coptic binding (hey my craft sometimes intersects with antiquity) and brought out the large lovely amber pendant my brother gave me for Christmas the year before last. I looked through my rock collection and pulled out a lovely rock crystal and a cut and polished ammonite.

I went into the garden and collected some grass, weeds, chive seed pods, and a sprig of rosemary. The grass was tied with some red wool I had bought for the purposes of teaching ancient magic and the weeds with a length of leather lacing.

I then placed it all on the black fabric and started photographing it with my iPad.

This was the result:

So what does this actually represent?

A number of remedies recommended by Pliny the Elder, and some ring-ins to just look nice.

The bag and the scrap of paper were used to prevent eye disease. In the words of Pliny:

Marcus Servilius Nonianus, a leading citizen of Rome, who was not so long ago afraid of ophthalmia, used to tie around his neck, before he mentioned the disease himself or anyone else spoke to him about it, a sheet of paper fastened with thread, on which were written the two Greek letters rho and alpha; Mucianus, three times consul, following the same observance, used a living fly in a white linen bag. (Natural History, 28.5.29.)

No, I did not try to catch a fly to put in the bag; it wouldn't photograph anyway.

The sea-horse was used in various manners, but Pliny recorded that they were tied on malarial patients (32.38.113).

The sponge was a part of an "amulet". It was meant to be tied onto the front of a baby's skull moistened along with a frog as "a very efficacious cure" for siriasis (32.48.138), possibly a form of sun-stroke or childhood inflammatory disease. No frogs were used in the production of this image.

Coral was tied to babies just as a protective amulet, and not to treat or prevent a particular disease, but it was used as a medical ingredient burnt to ash to address spitting up blood, or as an ingredient in eye salves and treating ulcers and smoothing scars. (32.11.24).

Pliny (37.11.44) describes rural women from north of the Po River in Italy wearing amber as necklaces to prevent diseases like tonsilitis. As images for my paper, I had been considering using images from Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum by Faya Causey, which is really worth a look.

The knotted crochet cotton is my interpretation of a treatment for groin complaint, maybe a lymphatic problem: 

Some treat affections of groin by tying with nine or seven knots a thread taken from a web [i.e. removed from someone's weaving], at each knot naming some widow, and so attach it to the groin. (Natural History, 28.12.48).

The grass is another piece of artistic license. Pliny writes:

A plant that grows on the head of a statue, gathered into a piece taken from some garment and tied on with red thread, is said to relieve headache immediately on being applied. (Natural History, 24.106.170).

Ever since I saw this image online, I the words "plant that grows on the head of a statue" evokes the following image:

Gargoyle with grass growing from its head

As for the weeds tied with leather, again I took some liberties. As shown by the "plant that grows on the head of statue", not all remedies needed to be precise plants. Pliny wrote:

Any plant whatsoever, gathered before sun-rise out of streams or rivers, provided that nobody sees the gatherer, if it is tied to the left arm, is said to keep away tertian fever [a form of malaria], provided that the patient does not know what is going on. (Natural History, 24.107.170).

No, I did not go down in my nearest park's storm water drain/creek at dawn and acquire this weed. Given that I just needed the look, I just pulled a weed out of my yard in the afternoon. But hey, we had had a lot of rain and the yard was a little boggy. I used the leather lacing as leather appears to have been used to tie on amulets sometimes.

The rest of the elements are more there for their visual interest:

• The little metal box was included to represent containers or capsulae used to hold amulets on the body. It looks cute too.
• The chive seed pod (the light leaf-like thing on the grass on the right of the image) has no reference at all.
• The rosemary was used extensively in medicine and looks nice.
• The rock crystal just looks nice.
• The ammonite appears in some lithic texts relating to the treatment of snakebites. While it doesn't go into details of the Graeco-Roman use of these stones you might like to look at this discussions of ammonites from London's Natural History Museum.
• Mustard seeds were included as mustard commonly appear in Greek Magical Papyri, including referring to the seeds as the "Semen of Herakles," please note that "semen" in Latin literally means seed (PGM XII.434).

There are plenty of other things which were tied onto patients according to Pliny, but I did not have access to them or they are gross. One such treatment included cat faeces and the claws of an owl. I could have waited for my cat to use his litter tray, but it might not have been particularly photogenic.

Since I created and photographed this tableau, I have acquired a few more things which I could have incorporated into it, and given that my paper does not go into a lot of detail about the items I included in this photo, I am now wondering whether I ought to put together a little display for people to have a look at after my paper so I am not completely misleading people with a rather attractive photograph to advertise my paper on spreadsheets.