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Abstract
This dissertation investigates the relationship between sexual intercourse and medicine during the Roman imperial period (c. I-IV CE). Whereas previous scholarship has tended to view that relationship through the lenses of historical progress and/or ethics, I adopt the concept of sexual medicine as an organizational scheme in order to better analyze what ancient medical texts say about the body's sexual functions (such as desire, arousal, and the ability to experience pleasure). Rather than affirming an influential narrative in which imperial medical thinkers developed austere attitudes towards sex, I demonstrate that ethicizing interpretations misportray the relevance of intercourse to medicine during the Roman Empire and unduly narrow the available evidence to dietetic discussions. I argue that the ability to engage in sex was deemed worthy of preservation and therapeutic intervention whenever compromised because sex was
considered an integral component of health in Greco-Roman medicine. Moreover, I show that imperial authors devoted considerable attention to sexual diseases, infertility, genital dysfunction, and the use of materia medica to enhance sexual performance. These underexplored topics are dealt with at length in their respective chapters.
