From ancient Egypt to Imperial Rome, from Greek medicine to early Christianity, this volume examines how human bodily fluids influenced ideas about gender, sexuality, politics, emotions, and morality, and how those ideas shaped later European thought.

List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Introduction, Mark Bradley, Victoria Leonard, and Laurence Totelin; Part I The language of fluidity; 1. Fluid vocabulary: flux in the lexicon of bodily emissions, Amy Coker; Part II A woman in flux; 2. A valid excuse for a day off work: menstruation in an ancient Egyptian village, Rosalind Janssen; 3. Uterine bleeding, knowledge, and emotion in ancient Greek medical and magical representations, Irene Salvo; 4. Puellae gently glow: scent, sweat, and the real in Latin love elegy and Ovid's didactic works, Jane Burkowski; 5. Overflowing bodies and a Pandora of Ivory: the pure humours of an erotic surrogate, Catalina Popescu; Part III Erotic and generative fluids; 6. The eyes have it: from generative fluids to vision rays, Julie Laskaris; 7. 'Infertile' and 'sub-fertile' semen in the Hippocratic Corpus and the biological works of Aristotle, Rebecca Fallas; 8. Say it with fluids: what the body exudes and retains when Juvenal's couple relationships go awry, Claude-Emmanuelle Centlivres Challet; 9. Flabby flesh and foetal formation: body fluidity and foetal sex differentiation in Ancient Greek medicine, Tara Mulder; 10. One-seed, two-seed, three-seed? Reassessing ancient theories of generation, Rebecca Flemming; 11. Phalli fighting with fluids: approaching images of ejaculating phalli in the Roman world, Adam Parker; Part IV Nutritive and healthy fluids; 12. A natural symbol? The (un)importance of blood in early Greek literary and religious contexts, Emily Kearns; 13. Taste and the senses: Galen's humours clarified, John Wilkins; 14. Breastmilk, breastfeeding, and the female body in early Imperial Rome, Thea Lawrence; 15. Breastmilk in the cave and on the arena: early Christian stories of lactation in context, Laurence Totelin; Part V Dissolving and liquefying bodies; 16. Tears and the leaky vessel: permeable and fluid bodies in Ovid and Lucretius, Peter Kelly; 17. Seneca's corpus: a sympathy of fluids and fluctuations, Michael Goyette; 18. Bodily fluids, grotesque imagery, and poetics in Persius' Satires, Andreas Gavrielatos; Part VI Wounded and putrefying bodies; 19. 'Efflux is my manifestation': positive conceptions of putrefactive fluids in the ancient Egyptian coffin texts, Tasha Dobbin-Bennett; 20. The physiology of matricide: revenge and metabolism imagery in Aeschylus' Oresteia, Goran Vidovic; 21. Open wounds, liquid bodies, and melting selves in Early Imperial Latin literature, Assaf Krebs; Part VII Ancient fluids: afterlife and reception; 22. The reception of Classical constructions of blood in Medieval and Early Modern martyrologies, Anastasia Stylianou; 23. 'Expelling the purple tyrant from the citadel': the menstruation debate in book 2 of Abraham Cowley's Plantarum libri sex (1662), Caroline Spearing; 24. Opening the body of fluids: taking in and pouring out in Renaissance readings of Classical women, Helen King; Envoi, Mark Bradley and Victoria Leonard; Index