ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on ancient and early Byzantine discourses (2nd c. BC–7th c. AD) on wet nursing and mothering to investigate their parallel terms and concerns regarding the monitoring of the lifestyle, ethics, and bodies of wet nurses. By examining a wide range of sources (primarily medical, philosophical, and theological) and discussing their intertextual relationships, the analysis brings to the fore the strict guidelines advanced by medical, philosophical, theological, and other authorities for the choice and regulation of wet nurses by elite families. The (parallel) examination of the texts in question shows the contemporary societies’ anxieties about wet nursing and the wet nurses’ impact on their (elite) nurslings. Furthermore, the wet nurses’ ambiguous status and profiles as inferior Others that are subject to both the biological parents’ gaze and control, on the one hand, and as compelling female philosophers, on the other, is unravelled.
