ABSTRACT
According to some of the first studies of ancient disability, physical impairments were viewed by the communities of Antiquity as a metaphor for divine punishment (Garland 1995; Vlahogiannis 1998). Hence, ‘Every god could punish, and specific punishments were not restricted to specific deities. Disabilities – destruction of limbs through paralysis or injury, loss of the use of senses, personal appearance, sanity, impotence – became intertwined with punishment for violations of divine and moral order’ (Vlahogiannis 1998: 29). However, attempting to interpret past attitudes towards impairment with reference to ‘the anger of the gods’ (Garland 1995: 59) overlooks the key fact that every god could also heal, and as the example of Nicanor and his crutch reveals, people of the ancient Mediterranean might look to the divine world for assistance with their impaired bodies as much as they feared punishment for moral wrongdoings. Inscribed on one of four stele erected at the Asclepieion at Epidaurus in the 4th century bce the ‘miracle tale’ (iama) of Nicanor advertised the willingness of one of the great healing gods of the ancient world to intervene positively in the bodies of the diseased, injured and impaired. Regardless of whether this tale was founded on real events or embellished by the temple priests and officials in order to advertise the efficacy of Asclepius’ curative powers, its presence alongside nearly seventy similar stories of pilgrims who had received divine healing for pain, illness, injury, infertility and a variety of chronic physical conditions demonstrates the existence of powerful ideas concerning the ability of the divine to remove or minimize potentially disabling impairments (LiDonnici 1992; Dillon 1994; Rynearson 2003).1
