ABSTRACT
In this chapter I briefly consider elements in the medical and disease history of the societies which constituted classical Greece in the sixth, fifth and fourth centuries BCE (Athens, Sparta, Cos, etc.). I will then quickly touch on the situation in the pagan polities which built directly on ancient Greek legacies. These successor polities were first, the Hellenistic Empire (for our purposes based in Alexandria and Athens) which incorporated the conquests of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE) and, second, the Roman Empire, the composite polity surrounding the Mediterranean Sea that was constructed by Augustus Caesar in and after 27 BCE.
