L'oculistique dans le monde romain : textes et documents épigraphiques (1er-Ve s. apr. J.-C.)

According to the texts and the inscriptions engraved on funerary monuments and on collyrium stamps, the world of Imperial Rome witnessed the rise of a new profession, namely that of the oculist. At the time, unattractiveness was perceived as a sign of depravity and consequently, ocular infections were usually assessed and treated solely in terms of their outward symptoms. In fact, symptoms that caused disfigurement could also make someone an outcast in society. The level of competence being different from one oculist to the next, their professional status and working conditions would vary. Proof of this lies in the terminology recorded in archives. Although the latter documents sometimes speak of an interest in nosography that is attuned to scholarly pursuits, references to a more rudimentary kind of ambition are more frequent. Similarly, despite Hellenistic discoveries, knowledge of ocular anatomy and physiology was generally incomplete. It follows that the medical reasoning upheld by practitioners, based on explanatory analogy, favoured rituals using magic that were experimented in the provinces of the Roman Empire