Physiognomonics (Greek:Φυσιογνωμονικά;Latin:Physiognomonica) is anAncient Greekpseudo-Aristotelian treatise onphysiognomy attributed toAristotle (and part of theCorpus Aristotelicum). It is aPeripatetic work,[1] dated to the 4th/3rd century BC.[2][3]
AlthoughPhysiognomonics is the earliest work surviving in Greek devoted to the subject, texts preserved on clay tablets provide evidence of physiognomy manuals from theFirst Babylonian dynasty, containing divinatory case studies of the ominous significance of various bodily dispositions. At this point physiognomy is "a specific, already theorized, branch of knowledge" and the heir of a long-developed technical tradition.[4]
While loosely physiognomic ways of thinking are present in Greek literature as early asHomer, physiognomy proper is not known before theclassical period. The termphysiognomonia first appears in the fifth-century BCHippocratic treatiseEpidemics (II.5.1). Physiognomy was mentioned in a work byAntisthenes on theSophists, which provides evidence of its recognition as an art (techne).[4]
In Aristotle's time, physiognomics was acknowledged as an art (techne) with its own skilled practitioners (technitai), as we see from a reference inGeneration of Animals (IV.3):[4]
Then people say that the child has the head of a ram or a bull, and so on with other animals, as that a calf has the head of a child or a sheep that of an ox. All these monsters result from the causes stated above, but they are none of the things they are said to be; there is only some similarity, such as may arise even where there is no defect of growth. Hence often jesters compare someone who is not beautiful to a goat breathing fire, or again to a ram butting, and a certain physiognomist reduced all faces to those of two or three animals, and his arguments often prevailed on people. (trans. Pratt rev.Barnes)
Already in antiquity, physiognomy's pretensions to a "scientific" foundation were questioned and debated. It had connections tomedicine, but also tomagic anddivination.[4]
The treatise is divided into sections on theory (805a1-808b10) and method (808b11-814b9). The connections between bodily features and character are treated in detail, cataloguing, for example, twelve kinds of nose, and the distinctive features of thecinaedus.[5]
Thepseudo-Aristotelian treatise begins with an allusion to Aristotle'sPrior Analytics (II.27, on the body-soul correlation), and many of the physiognomic connections discussed are mentioned specifically in theHistory of Animals.[5]
The author's systematic scheme of physiognomic relationships was not adopted by later writers on the subject; the proliferation of incompatible teachings had "the cumulative effect of undermining the authority of the profession as a whole."[5]
GreekWikisource has original text related to this article:Φυσιογνωμονικά
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