Teaching Disability in Antiquity
By Alex R.A. Lee
Posted January 12, 2022
I have recently decided to merge two parts of my life: disability activism and engaging with disability studies in my work. I enjoy teaching based on my research, so I decided to integrate a session on disability into my Liberal Studies module. This is a global take on Antiquity, broadly understood, which must include a few key texts like Gilgamesh, but over which I otherwise have free reign. I decided to teach a session on disability and impairment in Ancient Rome.
As a medievalist, I know how important it is to provide a framework for understanding disability in the past, rather than just using modern terms uncritically, or even translating ancient or medieval terms uncritically. So, this was my starting point for the session. I had the students read a couple of ancient primary sources on disability, as well as a secondary text, but also threw in something from Scope on the social model of disability.
I usually start all of my classes with a couple of slides of information before we get into the discussion, but for this session I had a lot more information I wanted to convey to the students. I started off by explaining three different models of disability: medical, social and cultural, and the debate over person first language and identity first language. I explained how most disabled people prefer to use the social model, and IfL, but how it’s important to follow a disabled person’s personal preference. I also talked about how the cultural model can be a really helpful way of looking at the past using this modern framework.
While I like the social model, I feel like it doesn’t encompass everything to do with my disability: even if all the social barriers were removed, I’d still be living with chronic pain. So, I really like the cultural model, not just academically, but also generally, to help me think about disability both for myself and through a scholarly lens.
The key primary source for the session was a section from Sallust’s Histories. This essentially shows disability pride: Sertorius, a man who has been wounded in battle and now has a visible difference and is visually impaired, wears his scars as a sign of his bravery in battle. Sallust explicitly says “He took great pride in this disfigurement of his body, and was not ashamed of his wounds, because they showed how gloriously he had preserved the rest of his body.” While this example is decidedly extraordinary and cannot be considered representative of disability in the Ancient World broadly writ, the students were amazed to find such a positive representation. It did a good job of demonstrating how each impairment is different, and how important it is to pay attention to each individual case rather than making broad generalisations.
A key discussion we had was over the use of language. A question I had the students discuss was whether we should use modern terms to describe disability and impairment in the past. The consensus was generally yes, and there was a bit of a sticking point over terms that would now be considered offensive. Some of the students argued that there is no need to use offensive language; since we have a kinder vocabulary nowadays, those words just have no place.
From my standpoint as a historian working with sources in medieval Italian, it’s important to translate accurately for non-experts. This means that sometimes I use words that are considered offensive by a modern audience, but I make sure to use them in quote marks, like “attratto/ratratto/atracto” which usually means “deformed”. For me, it’s important that the audience is able to see the original rendering of the terms as clearly as possible, so that they can understand the way the language of disability changes over time. As I explained to my students, I set a caveat that I will be doing this throughout my work, as it’s important to meet past societies on their own terms and not obscure the linguistic complexities of the original texts by using more modern language. I think that my position as a disabled scholar means that I’m more comfortable using language around disability, and also that I have a good understanding of how to couch difficult terminology.
One thing I took away from this session is the importance of language: students were not aware of the different models of disability before the class, or even the person/identity first language debate, and so I think this was an important idea to get across, not just in terms of ancient disability but more generally. Next time I teach the course I’m excited to incorporate new material, as the two things I’ve put in further reading came out after my class - the podcast “You’re Dead To Me” (see below) literally a couple of days later. This source in particular will help me to centre disabled voices in the discussion of disabled people in the past.
Bibliography
Sources I used in class:
Scope, Social Model of Disability, [https://www.scope.org.uk/about-us/social-model-of-disability]
Sallust, Histories, 1.77 [http://www.attalus.org/translate/sallust.html]
Disabilities in Roman Antiquity Disparate Bodies A Capite ad Calcem, ed. by Christian Laes, Chris Goodey, and M. Lynn Rose (Brill, 2013)
Sources I plan to use in the future:
Debby Sneed ‘Disability and Infanticide in Ancient Greece’, Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 90.4 (2021), 747-72
You’re Dead to Me podcast episode on “Disability in the Ancient World” with Rosie Jones and Dr Jane Draycott [https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0b0wd4p].
Alex is a medieval historian who works on the intersection between popular religion and epidemic disease in late medieval Europe. Her most recent project was on the Bianchi of 1399, a popular religious revival during a time of plague, on which her first monograph came out in 2021 . She currently teaches at NYU London, University College London and King’s College London. You can follow her on Twitter @AlexRALee or read her blog https://bianchi1399.wordpress.com/.