rogue classicism

Not Sure What to Make of This One …

I’ve got a large file of ‘claims’ associated with the ancient world which I try to track down every now and then, but this one arrived today and I can’t wrap my head around it at all … from one of those press release things:

The more she listened to this music, the better she felt. She wondered, why? She found that music had been used for healing since the beginning of time and that only in the last few hundred years had it evolved into being used primarily for entertainment. Euclid used the monochord, a single-stringed instrument, for healing in 300 BC. In the third century B.C., Socrates was said to have healed hundreds by playing water-filled glasses..

… so … anyone know of Euclid or Socrates ‘healing’?

David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist

One response to “Not Sure What to Make of This One …”

  1. JB Avatar
    JB

    Socrates and Euclid are new by me. There was, however, a connection between magic, music, and medicine, so it’s not completely out of left field. Carmina, after all, are both songs and spells. Odyssey book 19, 455-58, describes his uncles healing Odysseus by singing over the wound. Stanford’s edition has a note on this — he claims that stopping blood from flowing by incantations was known throughout Europe. He gives a few parallel examples in Greek and Latin texts, but no mention of Socrates or Euclid. Especially not in the third century BC.

    Fabulous blog, by the way! I really love it, especially the round-up of archaeological news.

    Reply

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