https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/849 Entrées d’index fr 0 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/846 This article invites a reading of Cydippe’s medical case in the third book of Callimachus’ Aetia (fr.75.10-19) in light of Hippocratic gynecology. In the first part, I discuss in detail Cydippe’s three illnesses, focusing on their rich medical allusions and illustrating how they all create a coherent medical record. While on the face of it Cydippe’s clinical symptoms resemble descriptions of lovesickness in Hellenistic poetry, it is precisely her absence of expressed desire, as I argue, that makes her sick in Callimachus, and thus differentiates her from other suffering female figures such as Medea in Apollonius Rhodius or Simaetha in Theocritus. In the second part, I move on to examine Callimachus’ problematisation of desire as an exclusively male prerogative in the narrative (that of Acontius) and I attempt to explain Cydippe’s dissociation from it by looking closely at the sexual politics of Hippocratic medicine: Cydippe’s silent transition from virgin to wife, and the illnesses that affect her so long as this transition is suspended evoke, as I illustrate, medical discussions on when and how virginity should be surrendered for a young girl to remain healthy ([Hipp.] De virginum morbis) as well as the Hippocratic notion that absence of desire defines both an adult woman’s sexual life but also the critical moment of her first sexual experience. mar., 14 juin 2022 10:44:05 +0200 mer., 13 déc. 2023 10:11:55 +0100 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/846