Regimen in the Hippocratic Corpus: Diaita and Its Problems.

Abstract

In Greek literature of the Classical period prior to the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, comedy, reflecting as it does ordinary life, offers a particularly rich source of evidence concerning dietary practices. The historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and later Xenophon, also provide evidence, in passing, about the regimen of both individuals and societies. But medical literature is the most important source we possess in regard to Greek regimen of the Classical period, both for people in good health and for those who are ill. Indeed, it is in the corpus of sixty or so medical treatises attributed to Hippocrates, an important part of which dates from the second half of the 5th and the first half of the 4th centuries, that the Greek word for regimen, δίαιτα, occurs most frequently. It is first attested in the 6th century in the lyric poetry of Alcaeus (once), then at the beginning of the 5th century in the lyric poetry of Pindar (on two occasions), and in the tragedies of Aeschylus (once).1 It continues to be attested in the second half of the 5th century in both tragedy and comedy, although without much of an increase in frequency: Sophocles (three instances), Euripides (five), and a mere seven times in Aristophanes, even though comedy provides detailed evidence concerning dietary regimen.2 It is with the historians that the term first begins to take on serious importance, particularly in the Ionic prose of Herodotus (where it occurs 19 times),3 rather more so than in the case of Thucydides (10 times).4 Yet even if one adds the twenty or so occurrences