The Pulse of Love: Antiochus and His Stepmom Stratonice
“His disease is love, love for a woman, but a hopeless love.”
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One of the ways ancient doctors diagnosed their patients was by reading their pulse. This practice has deep roots as it is attested in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, which is dated to be from 1550 BCE. The 4th century BCE Greek medical thinker Praxagoras of Cos may have been the first to introduce pulse reading into the wider body of Greek medicine.
Today, we mostly check someone’s pulse to know if they’re dead. Grandad fell off a tower, check his pulse. Dinner resumes. Advances in medical technology and techniques have provided us with modern means for diagnostics, often with astonishing accuracy.
For the ancients, the pulse held a myriad of information on the condition of the patient, especially if the said patient was still alive. They checked not just the rhythm of the pulse but also its oscillations, relative strength, and changes in frequency. It was such a fundamental part of ancient medical practice that Galen decried doctors who were unable to read pulses correctly. “They consider a pulse that is not large to be large,” he wrote in On Prognosis, “or sometimes one that is not swift to be swift, or one that is not slow to be slow.”
One of the most memorable stories from the ancient world that involve pulse reading comes to us from various sources, with Plutarch’s version being the most popular and complete. It involves the young Antiochus, his father Seleucus I Nicator, progenitor of the Seleucid empire, and a young woman named Stratonice who was married to Seleucus. In Demetrius, Plutarch tells us what had happened between the three of them (I will cut the original passage into paragraphs for reading convenience):
For it came to pass, as it would seem, that Antiochus fell in love with Stratonice, who was young, and was already mother of a little boy by Seleucus. Antiochus was distressed, and resorted to many means of fighting down his passion, but at last, condemning himself for his inordinate desires, for his incurable malady, and for the subjugation of his reason, he determined to seek a way of escape from life, and to destroy himself gradually by neglecting his person and abstaining from food, under pretence of having some disease.
But Erasistratus, his physician, perceived quite easily that he was in love, and wishing to discover who was the object of his passion (a matter not so easy to decide), he would spend day after day in the young man’s chamber, and if any of the beauties of the court came in, male or female, he would study the countenance of Antiochus, and watch those parts and movements of his person which nature has made to sympathize most with the inclinations of the soul.
Accordingly, when any one else came in, Antiochus showed no change; but whenever Stratonice came to see him, as she often did, either alone, or with Seleucus, lo, those tell-tale signs of which Sappho sings were all there in him, — stammering speech, fiery flushes, darkened vision, sudden sweats, irregular palpitations of the heart, and finally, as his soul was taken by storm, helplessness, stupor, and pallor. And besides all this, Erasistratus reasoned further that in all probability the king’s son, had he loved any other woman, would not have persisted to the death in refusing to speak about it. He thought it a difficult matter to explain the case fully to Seleucus, but nevertheless, relying on the father’s kindly feelings towards his son, he took the risk one day, and told him that love was the young man’s trouble, a love that could neither be satisfied nor cured.
The king was amazed, and asked why his son’s love could not be satisfied. ‘Because, indeed,’ said Erasistratus, ‘he is in love with my wife.’ ‘Then canst thou not, O Erasistratus,’ said Seleucus, ‘since thou art my son’s friend, give him thy wife in addition to thy friendship, especially when thou seest that he is the only anchor of our storm-tossed house?’ ‘Thou art his father,’ said Erasistratus, ‘and yet thou wouldst not have done so if Antiochus had set his affections on Stratonice.’
‘My friend,’ said Seleucus, ‘would that someone in heaven or on earth might speedily convert and turn his passion in this direction; since I would gladly let my kingdom also go, if I might keep Antiochus.’ So spake Seleucus with deep emotion and many tears, whereupon Erasistratus clasped him by the hand and told him he had no need of Erasistratus; for as father, husband, and king, he was himself at the same time the best physician also for his household.
Consequently Seleucus called an assembly of the entire people and declared it to be his wish and purpose to make Antiochus king of all Upper Asia, and Stratonice his queen, the two being husband and wife; he also declared it to be his opinion that his son, accustomed as he was to be submissive and obedient in all things, would not oppose his father in this marriage; and that if his wife were reluctant to take this extraordinary step, he called upon his friends to teach and persuade her to regard as just and honourable whatever seemed good to the king and conducive to the general welfare. On this wise, then, we are told, Antiochus and Stratonice became husband and wife.
It is interesting to note that ancient doctors acknowledged lovesickness as a real and even serious disease, having its own etiology and pathology. Appian’s version of the story contains, in my opinion, the most emphatic diagnosis of Antiochus’ misery, as it succinctly captures the full extent and magnitude of the disease. In Syrian Wars, he describes what has befallen Antiochus:
His disease is love, love for a woman, but a hopeless love.
As we can see, love itself is not the disease. In Antiochus, it only becomes a problem because the love he experiences has become hopeless.
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