A Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine

Résumé du livre

How were Greek texts on the care and medical treatment of the horse transmitted from antiquity to the present day? Using the evidence of Byzantine manuscripts of the veterinary compilation known as the Hippiatrica, Anne McCabe traces the journey of the texts from the stables to the medieval script-orium and ultimately to the printed edition. The journey is a far-ranging one: Greek treatises composed in the fourth century by Roman soldiers on the Danube frontier were transposed into higher literary style, translated into Arabic in ninth-century Baghdad, reworked at the imperial court of tenth-century Constantinople, translated into Latin for the Normans of Sicily, copied by refugees after the fall of the Byzantine empire. The book provides a guide to the complex history of the Hippiatrica, and is also a case-study for the transmission of scientific texts during the Byzantine period.