(7) There were also mutual help societies (ἔρανοι). Those for relief would appear to have been loan societies (cf. Theoph. Eth.), one of whose members would beat up contributions to help a friend, who would afterwards repay the advance.
The criticisms of Aristotle (384-321 B.C.) suggest the direction to which he looked for reform. He (Pol. 1320 a) passes a very unfavourable judgment on the distribution of public money to the poorer citizens. The demagogues (he does not speak of Athens particularly) distributed the surplus revenues to the poor, who received them all at the same time; and then they were in want again. It was only, he argued, like pouring water through a sieve. It were better to see to it that the greater number were not so entirely destitute, for the depravity of a democratic government was due to this. The problem was to contrive how plenty (εὐπορία, not poverty, ἀπορία) should become permanent. His proposals are adequate aid and voluntary charity. Public relief should, he urges, be given in large amounts so as to help people to acquire small farms or start in business, and the well-to-do (εὔποροι) should in the meantime subscribe to pay the poor for their attendance at the public assemblies. (This proves, indeed, how the payments had become poor relief.) He mentions also how the Carthaginian notables divided the destitute amongst them and gave them the means of setting to work, and the Tarentines (κοινὰ ποιοῦντες) shared their property with the poor. (The Rhodians also may be mentioned (Strabo xiv. c. 652), amongst whom the well-to-do undertook the relief of the poor voluntarily.) The later word for charitable distribution was a sharing (κοινωνία, Ep. Rom. xv. 26), which would seem to indicate that after Aristotle’s time popular thought had turned in that direction. But the chief service rendered by Aristotle—a service which covered indeed the whole ground of social progress—was to show that unless the purpose of civil and social life was carefully considered and clearly realized by those who desired to improve its conditions, no change for the better could result from individual or associated action.
Two forms of charity have still to be mentioned: charity to the stranger and to the sick. It will be convenient to consider both in relation to the whole classical period.
With the growth of towns the administration of hospitality was elaborated.
(1) There was hospitality between members of families bound by the rites of host and guest. The guest received as a right only shelter and fire. Usually he dined with the host the first day, and if afterwards he was fed provisions were supplied The stranger. to him. There were large guest-chambers (ξενών) or small guest-houses, completely isolated on the right or left of the principal house; and here the guest was lodged. (2) There were also, e.g. at Hierapolis (Sir W.M. Ramsay’s Phrygia, ii. 97), brotherhoods of hospitality (ξένοι τεκμηρεῖοι, bearers of the sign), which made hospitality a duty, and had a common chest and Apollo as their tutelary god. (3) There were inns or resting-places (καταγώγια) for strangers at temples (Thuc. iii. 68; Plato, Laws, 953 A) and places of resort (λέσχη) at or near the temples for the entertainment of strangers—for instance, at a temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus (Pausanias ii. 174); and Pausanias argues that they were common throughout the country. Probably also at the temples hospitable provision was made for strangers. The evidence at present is not perhaps sufficiently complete, but, so far as it goes, it tends to the conclusion that in pre-Christian times hospitality was provided to passers-by and strangers in the temple buildings, as later it was furnished in the monasteries and churches. (4) There were also in towns houses for strangers (ξενών) provided at the public cost. This was so at Megara; and in Crete strangers had a place at the public meals and a dormitory. Xenophon suggested that it would be profitable for the Athenian state to establish inns for traders (καταγώγια δημόσια) at Athens. Thus, apart from the official hospitality of the proxenus or “consul,” who had charge of the affairs of foreigners, and the hospitality which was shown to persons of distinction by states or private individuals, there was in Greece a large provision for strangers, wayfarers and vagrants based on the charitable sentiment of hospitality. Among the Romans similar customs of private and public hospitality prevailed; and throughout the empire the older system was altered, probably very slowly. In Christian times (cf. Ramsay above) Pagan temples were (about A.D. 408) utilized for other purposes, including that of hospitality to strangers.
Round the temples, at first probably village temples, the organization of medical relief grew up. Primitive medicine is connected with dreams, worship, and liturgical “pollution,” punishment and penitence, and an The sick. experimental practice. Finally, systematic observation and science (with no knowledge of chemistry and little of physiology) assert themselves, and a secular administration is created by the side of the older religious organization.
Sickness among primitive races is conceived to be a material substance to be extracted, or an evil spirit to be driven away by incantation. Religion and medicine are thus at the beginning almost one and the same thing. In Anatolia, in the groups of villages (cf. Ramsay as above, i. 101) under the theocratic government of a central ἱερόν or temple, the god Men Karou was the physician and saviour (σωτήρ and σώζων) of his people. Priests, prophets and physicians were his ministers. He punished wrong-doing by diseases which he taught the penitent to cure. So elsewhere pollution, physical or moral, was chastened by disease and loss of property or children, and further ills were avoided by sacrifice and expiation and public warning. In the temple and out of this phase of thought grew up schools of medicine, in whose practice dreams and religious ritual retained a place. The newer gods, Asclepius and Apollo, succeeded the older local divinities; and the “sons” of Asclepius became a profession, and the temple with its adjacent buildings a kind of hospital. There were many temples of Asclepius in Greece and elsewhere, placed generally in high and salubrious positions. After ablution the patient offered sacrifices, repeating himself the words of the hymn that was chanted. Then, when night came on, he slept in the temple. In the early dawn he was to dream “the heavenly dream” which would suggest his cure; but if he did not dream, relations and others—officials at the temple—might dream for him. At dawn the priests or sons of Asclepius came into the temple and visited the sick, so that, in a kind of drama, where reality and appearance seemed to meet, the patients believed that they saw the god himself. The next morning the prescription and treatment were settled. At hand in the inn or guest-chambers of the temple the patient could remain, sleeping again in the temple, if necessary, and carrying out the required regimen. In the temple were votive tablets of cases, popular and awe-inspiring, and records and prescriptions, which later found their way into the medical works of Galen and others. At the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus was an inn (καταγώγιον) with four courts and colonnades, and in all 160 rooms. (Cf. Pausanias ii. 171; and Report, Archaeol. in Greece, R.C. Bosanquet, 1899, 1900.)
At three centres more particularly, Rhodes, Cnidos and Cos, were the medical schools of the Asclepiads. If one may judge from an inscription at Athens, priests of Asclepius attended the poor gratuitously. And years afterwards, in the 11th century, when there was a revival of medicine, we find (Daremberg, La Médecine: histoire et doctrines) at Salerno the Christian priest as doctor, a simple and less palatable pharmacy for the poor than for the rich, and gratuitous medical relief.
Besides the temple schools and hospitals there was a secular organization of medical aid and relief. States appointed trained medical men as physicians, and provided for them medical establishments (ἰατρεῖα, “large houses with large doors full of light”) for the reception of the sick, and for operations there were provided beds, instruments, medicines, &c. At these places also pupils were taught. A lower degree of medical establishment was to be found at the barbers’ shops. Out-patients were seen at the iatreia. They were also visited at home. There were doctors’ assistants and slave doctors. The latter, apparently, attended only slaves (Plato, Laws, 720); they do “a great service to the master of the house, who in this manner is relieved of the care of his slaves.” It was a precept of Hippocrates that if a physician came to a town where there were sick poor, he should make it his first duty to attend to them; and the state physician attended gratuitously any one who applied to him. There were also travelling physicians going rounds to heal children and the poor. These methods continued, probably all of them, to Christian times.
It has been argued that medical practice was introduced into Italy by the Greeks. But the evidence seems to show that there was a quite independent Latin tradition and school of medicine (René Brian, “Médecine dans le Latium et à Rome,” Rev. Archéol., 1885). In Rome there were consulting-rooms and dispensaries, and houses in which the sick were received. Hospitals are mentioned by Roman writers in the 1st century A.D. There were infirmaries—detached buildings—for sick slaves; and in Rome, as at Athens, there were slaves skilled in medicine. In Rome also for each regio there was a chief physician who attended to the poorer people.