Recent scholarship of identity issues in Imperial Rome has focused on the complicated intersections of “Greek” and “Roman” identity, a perfect microcosm in which to examine the issue in the high-stakes world of medical practice where physicians from competing Greek-speaking traditions interacted with wealthy Roman patients. I argue that not only did Roman patients and politicians have a variety of methods at their disposal for neutralizing the perceived threat of foreign physicians, but that the foreign physicians also were given ways to mitigate the substantial dangers involved in treating the Roman elite. I approach the issue from three standpoints: the political rhetoric surrounding foreign medicines, the legislation in place to protect doctors and patients, and the ethical issues debated by physicians and laypeople alike. I show that Roman lawmakers, policy makers, and physicians had a variety of ways by which the physical, political, and financial dangers of foreign doctors and Roman patients posed to one another could be mitigated.
The dissertation argues that despite barriers of xenophobia and ethnic identity, physicians practicing in Greek traditions were fairly well integrated into the cultural milieu of imperial Rome, and were accepted (if not always trusted) members of society. Their inclusion into the fabric of Romanitas prefigures the later integration of Roman and Greek identity that was to culminate in the Greek-speaking Romans of the Byzantine Empire.