ABSTRACT
Etymologically, epaphe derives from the Greek verb "to touch", and thus offers a close parallel to the Latin contagio. This chapter is concerned with the words epaphe and synanachrosis. A link between the theory of contagion and atomism or Asclepiadean and would help to explain some of the discrepancies between the Greek and Latin uses of contagion. In medicine, the quasi-atomist theories of Asclepiades were transformed by his successors into Methodism, medical doctrine that had great success in Rome and with which Plutarch was acquainted through his friend, the doctor Philo. The percipience of Thucydides, the historian and victim of the plague of Athens, is set against the apparent silence of the Hippocratic Cor pus, his understanding of perils of proximity against a blind belief in the workings of bad air. While the Greek compendia of Late Antiquity become increasingly Galenist in orientation, their Latin counterparts are far more open to other views than those of the Hippocratics or Dogmatists.
