The ancient Greek legend of Agnodice is one that has captivated modern audiences. Agnodice is said to have been the first female doctor, who disguised herself as a man because it was forbidden for women to practice medicine. In this article, we will examine the full story of Agnodice, the ancient sources behind it, and the question of whether or not she really existed.
The story of Agnodice as recorded in Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae
Agnodice is so famous today that you would be forgiven for assuming that there must be a lot of ancient sources about her. As it happens, though, the entire story of Agnodice comes solely from one very late Roman source: the Fabulae, a mythography written in Latin in around the second century AD or thereabouts by an anonymous Roman author who is known to modern scholars as “Pseudo-Hyginus.” Here is the version of the story recorded in Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae 10–13, as translated by R. Scott Smith:
“The ancients did not have midwives, and because of this many women died from a sense of shame because the Athenians made sure that no slave or woman learned medicine. A certain young girl named Agnodice desired to learn medicine; because of this desire, she cut off her hair, put on men’s clothing, and became the student of a certain Herophilus for formal instruction. After she was trained, whenever she heard a woman was having trouble below her waist, she went to her. Women did not trust her, thinking that she was a man, so Agnodice would lift up her tunic and prove that she was a woman. In this guise Agnodice would take care of these women.”
“But when doctors saw that their services were not being called upon by women, they accused Agnodice, asserting that she was an effeminate gigolo and seducing them, and that the women were only pretending to be sick. The Areopagites assembled and found Agnodice guilty. She lifted her tunic and showed them that she was a woman. The doctors then raised stronger accusations against her. Because of this the women leaders converged on the court and said, ‘You are not our husbands, but our enemies, for you have condemned the woman who discovered a means to provide for our well-being.’ The Athenians then changed the law to allow free-born women to learn medicine.”
Pseudo-Hyginus states that Agnodice learned medicine from “a certain Herophilus.” This almost certainly refers to Herophilos of Chalkedon (lived c. 335 – c. 280 BC), a famous doctor who lived in Alexandria and wrote extensively about gynecology. This indicates that Pseudo-Hyginus believed Agnodice had lived in around the early third century BC or thereabouts.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Ancient Roman relief carving of a midwife holding a baby that has just come out of its mother’s womb while the mother herself lies naked on the bed
Historicity of Agnodice
It’s easy to see why the tale of Agnodice appeals so much to modern audiences; it is a great story about female empowerment. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that Agnodice really existed. Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae is the only surviving ancient source that mentions her and it is certainly not a reliable source by any stretch of the imagination; on the contrary, it is not even a work of history, but rather a collection of various myths, legends, and folktales, some of them well-known, others more obscure. Most of the stories in it are about gods and heroes.
Agnodice’s name is also highly suspicious, since it is a compound of the words ἁγνός (hagnós), meaning “chaste,” and δίκη (díkē), meaning “justice.” The name therefore literally means something like “chaste before justice.” Since Agnodice is said to have been brought before court for seducing women and been proven innocent, this name seems a little too fitting.
Furthermore, Agnodice’s story is suspiciously similar to other stories that we know were in circulation at the time when Pseudo-Hyginus was writing. Most notably, the story is remarkably similar to a famous story about the courtesan Phryne recorded by the Greek writer Athenaios of Naukratis, who lived in around the late second and early third centuries AD, in his book Wise Men at Dinner.
Athenaios claims that Phryne was brought to trial in Athens for a capital offense, but she was defended by the orator Hypereides. When Hypereides saw that he was losing the case, he tore open Phryne’s dress before the judges, exposing her bare breasts. The judges were so moved to pity that they found her innocent. Here is what Athenaios himself says, as translated by C. D. Yonge:
“Now Phryne was a native of Thespiae; and being prosecuted by Euthias on a capital charge, she was acquitted: on which account Euthias was so indignant that he never instituted any prosecution afterwards, as Hermippus tells us. But Hypereides, when pleading Phryne’s cause, as he did not succeed at all, but it was plain that the judges were about to condemn her, brought her forth into the middle of the court, and, tearing open her tunic and displaying her naked bosom, employed all the end of his speech, with the highest oratorical art, to excite the pity of her judges by the sight of her beauty, and inspired the judges with a superstitious fear, so that they were so moved by pity as not to be able to stand the idea of condemning to death ‘a prophetess and priestess of Aphrodite.’ And when she was acquitted, a decree was drawn up in the following form: ‘That hereafter no orator should endeavour to excite pity on behalf of any one, and that no man or woman, when impeached, shall have his or her case decided on while present.’”
This story about Phryne is most likely apocryphal, but the similarities between it and the legend of Agnodice cannot be overlooked; both stories involve a woman with a reputation for lack of chastity being brought to trial in Athens and, in both stories, the woman is forced to reveal her body to the judges in order to get them to acquit her.
ABOVE: Phryne before the Areopagus, painted in 1861 by the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme
Stories about women disguising themselves as a men in order to follow professions that are traditionally reserved exclusively for men are common in the folklores of all cultures. There are even other stories of this kind from ancient Greece; a story recounted by the philosopher Dikaiarchos of Messana and preserved by the third-century AD biographer Diogenes Laërtios in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers says that the woman Axiothea of Phlious disguised herself as a man so that she could become a philosopher.
In later times, the Byzantines told many stories about women who supposedly disguised themselves as men so that they could become monks, including Marina the Monk, Euphrosyne of Alexandria, and Theodora of Alexandria.
The act of a woman lifting up her dress to reveal her genitals is common in ancient Greek mythology and art. This gesture is known in Greek as anasyrmos, which literally means “upskirt.” As I discuss in this article from January 2019 about ancient Greek festivals, the mythical woman Baubo is said to have made the goddess Demeter laugh when she was at Eleusis by lifting up her dress to expose her genitals. A number of terracotta figurines that are believed to depict Baubo have survived.
There are also numerous surviving statues of Aphrodite Kallipygos, which means “Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks.” These statues depict the goddess of love and beauty lifting up her skirt and peaking over her shoulder to examine her beautiful, round buttocks.
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Roman marble statue of Aphrodite Kallipygos on display in the Naples National Archaeological Museum
The trope of a large group of women uniting to use their influence over their husbands to deescalate a conflict in which their husbands are involved is also common in classical Greek and Roman literature. It most famously appears in the comedy Lysistrata, which was written by the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes in 411 BC. It also appears in the Roman myth of the Sabine women, who are said to have intervened to stop a war between their Roman husbands and their Sabine fathers and brothers.
All of these factors suggest that Agnodice’s story should be examined as folklore, not as history. There were, however, real women in antiquity who worked in fields that we now consider “STEM.” The most famous is probably the philosopher and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, whom I wrote about in this article I originally published in August 2018, but there were many others as well.
For instance, the Greek physician Metrodora, who lived in around the third or fourth century AD, wrote a book titled On the Diseases and Cures of Women, which is the oldest surviving medical text that is known to have been written by a woman.
ABOVE: The Intervention of the Sabine Women, painted in 1799 by the French Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David
