Cibo per gladiatori: il decotto d’orzo, Galeno e Commodo

Abstract

In addition to Galen’s more or less known works devoted to the dietary approach to therapy – De alimentorum
facultatibus, De bonis malisque sucis and De victu attenuante – there is a much lesser-known and little-studied work,
the De ptisana, “On the decoction of barley”, a polemical pamphlet of uncertain chronological placement within the
Corpus Galenicum. However, the somewhat singular fact that Galen felt the need – indeed, I would say the urgency – to
devote a “monographic” contribution to a single foodstuff, the πτισάνη, deserves particular attention: understanding the
multiple reasons for this choice – both technical-scientific, connected with the “dialectical” comparison with the Hippocratic
lesson, and of “therapeutic” utility for patients, and even of “political” expediency towards the reading public – can
certainly offer the double opportunity on the one hand to formulate a possible dating hypothesis of the text, and on the
other hand to proceed to its more precise historical contextualisation with regard to the addressees of the Galenic work.

Keywords: Rome, 2nd-3rd century AD, nutrition, medicine, society, ludi.