Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 103
slight or severe, a relatively mild disability like, say, astigmatism
or a badly set fracture, would often be as constricting as a major
one. Among the poor, the onset of disability would have meant a
further reduction in economic circumstances, thereby accelerating
the pace of their decline. It goes without saying that those who
were most at risk of becoming disabled as a result of both sickness
and injury were slaves. Because no professional medical care was
available for the bedridden, it would also have been the slaves who
tended to the needs of the seriously disabled. Those who could
afford round-the-clock medical attention probably received as
good as anything on offer in the intensive care ward of a modern
hospital. To use an example from the Roman world, we hear from
Pliny the Younger of the deformed and crippled Domitius Tullus,
who “could not even turn in bed without assistance.” Domitius,
an ungrateful old sod, was often heard to say that “every day he
licked the fingers of his slaves,” evidently because he required
them to spoon-feed him (Letters 8.18.10). No doubt, Greek slaves
also served as full-time caregivers.
In addition to those who became disabled in later life, many
infants would have suffered permanent debility from contaminated
drinking water, which encourages the spread of cholera and
typhus. Viral diseases such as meningitis, measles, mumps, scarlet
fever, and smallpox, which produce damaging side effects such as
deafness and blindness, are also likely to have been common. As
mentioned, malnutrition, which impedes the growth and composition
of bones, is likely to have been especially prevalent among
girls. Far fewer congenitally deformed infants would have survived
to adulthood than is the case today, however, in part because the
Greeks had little compunction about withholding the necessities of
life from those deemed incapable of leading a full and independent
existence. In Sparta, as we have seen, the abandonment of deformed
infants was required by law. Likewise, Aristotle recommended that,
in a well-ordered polity, there should be a law “to prevent the rearing
of deformed children” (The Politics 7.1335b, 19–21).
Attitudes Toward the Disabled
Reports of persons exhibiting gross deformities were probably
widely circulated in the Greek world, as the name of the one-eyed
giant Polyphemos (“Much talked about”) in The Odyssey suggests,
even though Homer never specifically describes the giant’s medical
condition, known as synophthalmia. Hesiod hints that the birth