[EXCERPT from Publishers
Weekly] -- Ancient Greeks and Romans used
substances from plants and animals to heal the
body, but also, Hillman says, to heal the mind and
as a source of creative inspiration. Taking up an
old thesis of such scholars as Morton Smith and
John Allegro, Hillman contends that ancient poets
and playwrights from Homer to Aristophanes, and
philosophers from Pythagoras to Empedocles,
featured the use of mind-altering drugs in their
writings. Hillman ends with a peroration on the
roots of the Western notion of freedom in ancient
Greece and on the right to use recreational drugs
as a core freedom.
Kirkus Reviews -- In ancient
Greece and Rome the right to use recreational
drugs was not just accepted, but an important
aspect of personal freedom. Conservative
academics don't want this to get around, claims
debut author Hillman, asserting that he was told
to delete material on recreational drug use from
his dissertation for a doctorate in classics from
the University of Wisconsin. That incident
provided the incentive for this book, which argues
that psychotropic drugs played a crucial role
in the history of Western intellectual
development. The earliest Greek
philosophers, Hillman avers, "flourished in a
society that embraced the intellectual, social,
and political freedoms associated with
recreational drug use." They understood the
value of mind-altering substances in assisting
creativity and advocated their use. In the
ancient world, he continues, such botanical
medicines as opium and belladonna were a comfort
and a source of hope; they were often mixed with
wine, or inhaled, or applied as suppositories to
provide relief from pain and illness. Knowledge of
their powerful effects-euphoria, sedation, states
of altered perception, temporary psychosis-was
widespread, and ancient myths are replete with
instances of their power. The author combs the
writings of Homer, Virgil and Ovid for references
to narcotics and the effects of various
stimulants, seeking to demonstrate their
familiarity to those authors and their audiences.
Among the personal freedoms valued highly by the
founders of Western civilization, he contends, was
the right of the individual to use drugs of any
kind; Hillman views the loss of this right as
deplorable. Apparently still stinging from his
academic experience, he claims that classical
scholars have a moral bent that has led them to
ignore this subject, making "the Greco-Roman
fascination with narcotics, stimulants, and
depressants . . . the last unexplored frontier of
ancient history."If the movement to
legalize marijuana is looking for an irate
classicist as spokesman, Hillman is it.