[Multiple births in ancient medical texts]. / Les naissances multiples dans les textes médicaux antiques.

Ancient medical writers and biologists elaborated different theories to explain the phenomenon of multiple births. The earliest extant texts are in the Hippocratic collection and in the physiological treatises of Aristotle. They express opposed ideas: for the Hippocratics multiple births are the result of an ideal conception, for Aristotle they are regarded as anomalies associated with notions of monstrosity and excess. These views shed light on ancient collective imagery. Three themes in particular are found in non-medical literature and iconography: twin birth as a model of ideal fecundity, the ambiguous status of twins of different sexes, and the relation of multiple births to monstrosity and animality, as evidenced by the motif of twins born from one egg.

[Multiple births in the medical texts of antiquity]. / Les naissances multiples dans les textes medicaux antiques.

Ancient medical writers and biologists elaborated different theories to explain the phenomenon of multiple births. The earliest extant texts are in the Hippocratic collection and in the physiological treatises of Aristotle. They express opposed ideas: for the Hippocratics multiple births are the result of an ideal conception, for Aristotle they are regarded as anomalies associated with notions of monstrosity and excess. These views shed light on ancient collective imagery. Three themes in particular are found in non-medical literature and iconography: twin birth as a model of ideal fecundity, the ambiguous status of twins of different sexes, and the relation of multiple births to monstrosity and animality, as evidenced by the motif of twins born from one egg.

[Sculptor of The Cripple of the Geneva Museum of Art and History. An ancient Greek portrayal of hemimelia?]. / Autour de l'estropié du Musée d'art et histoire de Genève. Une représentation archaique grecque d'hémimélie?

An archaic Greek terracotta vase in the Art and History Museum at Geneva depicts a man deprived of his left arm and with two legs ending in a stump below the knees. Did he suffer from a traumatism (amputation), a mutilating disease or congenital malformation (hemimelia)? A survey of written and iconographic sources throws light on the methods and limits of ancient surgery, and on the chances of survival of abnormal children in archaic and classical Greece.

[Twins in the Greco-Roman world: medical theories and iconographpy]. / Les jumeaux dans le monde greco-romain: theories medicales et iconographie.

The phenomenon of multiple births aroused very ambivalent feelings in the ancient classical world. This article endeavours to define how this ambivalence was expressed, on the one hand in ancient medical theories, through associations with concepts of monstrosity and excess, on the other hand in art, through a selection of mythological themes and iconographic conventions.