Christian Laes is Associate Professor of Latin and Ancient History at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), and Adjunct Professor of Ancient History at the University of Tampere (Finland). From 2014-16, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Social Research, University of Tampere. He has published five monographs, four edited volumes and over seventy international contributions on the human life course in Roman and Late Antiquity. Childhood, youth, old age, family, marriage and sexuality as well as disabilities are the main focuses of his scholarly work.

Preface and Acknowledgements

Note on the Bibliography

List of Contributors

1. Introduction: Disability History and the Ancient World. Past, Present and Future - Christian Laes
2. Disability and Infirmitas in the Ancient World: Demographic and Biological facts in the longue durée - April Pudsey

The Ancient (Near) East

3. Disabilities from Head to Toe in Hittite Civilisation - Richard Beal
4. Mesopotamia and Israel - Edgar Kellenberger
5. Ancient Persia and Silent Disability - Omar Coloru
6. Egyptian Medicine and Disabilities: from Pharaonic to Graeco-Roman Egypt - Rosalie David
7. India: Demystifying Disability in Antiquity - M. Miles
8. Disability in Ancient China - Olivia Milburn

The Greek World

9. The Greek vocabulary of disabilities - Evelyn Samama
10. Ability and Disability in Classical Athenian Oratory - Martha Lynn Rose
11. Disabilities in Comedy and Tragedy - Robert Garland
12. Legal (and Customary?) Approaches to the Disabled in Ancient Greece - Matthew Dillon
13. The Hellenistic Turn in Bodily Representations: Venting Anxiety in Terracotta Figurines - Alexandre Mitchell
14. Plutarch's 'Philosophy' of Disability: Human after All - Michiel Meeusen

The Roman World

15. Roman Perfect bodies. The Stoic View - Bert Gevaert
16. Foul and Fair Bodies, Minds, and Poetry in Roman Satire - Sarah Bond and T.H.M. Gellar-Goad
17. The 'Other' Romans: Deformed Bodies in the Visual Arts of Rome - Lisa Trentin
18. Mobility Impairment in the Sanctuaries of Early Roman Italy - Emma-Jayne Graham
19. Mental Disability? Galen on Mental Health - Chiara Thumiger
20. Madness and Mad Patients According to Caelius Aurelianus - Danielle Gourevitch
21. Disability in the Roman Digest - Peter Toohey

The Late Ancient World

22. Hysterical Women? Gender and Disability in Early Christian Narrative - Anna Rebecca Solevåg
23. Augustine's Sermons and Disabilities - Martin Claes and Anthony Dupont
24. Infirmitas in Monastic Rules - Jenni Kuuliala
25. The Coptic and Ethiopic Tradition on Disabilities - Carol Downer
26. The Disability Within: Sexual Desire as Disability in Syriac Christianity - John Martens
27. The Disabled in the Byzantine Empire - Stephanos Efthymiadis
28. What Difference did Islam Make? Disease and Disability in Early Medieval North Africa - Matthew Gaumer
29. Impotent Husbands, Eunuchs and Flawed Women in Early Islamic Law - Hocine Benkheira
30. Disability in Rabbinic Judaism - Lennart Lehmhaus and Julia Watts Belser

The endurance of tradition

31. Then and now. Canonical law on disabilities - Irina Metzler
32. The Imperfect body in Nazi Germany: Ancient Concepts, Modern Technologies - Toon Van Houdt

Bibliography

Index