Introduction

Oswald Spengler, in his famous book The decline of the West, postulated that any civilization ‘is a super organism with a limited and predictable lifespan’. Looking at the history of the world in a broad perspective, he rejected the usual linear division of history into ancient, medieval, and modern epochs, and instead believed that meaningful units in history are whole cultures which develop as organisms; the lifespan of such a culture is about a thousand years. Events such as the decline or fall of a culture do not happen fortuitously, he believed, but are a historical change of phase within a greater world picture. One of the eight cultures that he identified is ‘Classical’ (Greek and Roman). If one were to look at this culture, and take as a starting year 480 BCE, the beginning of the Fifty Golden Years of Greek civilization (also known as the Pentekontaetia) and as an end point take 476 CE, the traditional date of the fall of Rome, it does add up to nearly a thousand years. Spengler's cyclic theory could thus apply to this culture. In the first chapter of this book, where the environment, population and cultural life of specifically Roman North Africa were discussed, it was stated, à la Spengler, that the history of Roman North Africa is interesting because it encapsulates, as it were, the rise and fall of a civilization. The period in this case was half a millennium, from c. 146 BCE to 439 CE. But the history of Roman North Africa, although inextricably linked to that of the Roman Empire as a whole, ran its own course, and had its own reasons for its decline, which do not necessarily coincide with the reasons for the decline of Rome.

An account of the preservation and transmission of medical texts is linked to events forming part of the decline of Roman North Africa. Possible reasons for that decline will be discussed, followed by the role of the five important medical authors who form the core of this book. Some repetition in these two sections of information discussed in detail in former chapters is inevitable, the intention being to bring all the strands together in this final chapter to present a complete picture.