ABSTRACT
This chapter firstly examines the presence of antithetical pairs in the opening of a sample of ‘oral’ Hippocratic treatises and considers their persuasive function, which includes establishing the boundaries of the speaker’s authority and communicating moral messages. The chapter explores how accumulations of antithetical pairs on a certain subject often associate with one another, and considers how implied, associative meanings operate alongside the main surface content of the treatises to enhance the cases being made by the authors. The chapter goes on to examine the use of oppositional pairs in On Ancient Medicine in more detail, as they are used throughout this treatise and for more complex reasons than in the other ‘oral’ Hippocratic treatises sampled, and then considers how analysis of resonance between polar opposites in On the Sacred Disease can shed clearer light on the tension in the treatise identified in recent scholarship between the opening polemic and positive account of disease development.
