Jared Secord
Jared received his Ph.D. in Greek & Roman History from the University of Michigan in 2012. He previously taught at the University of Chicago and Washington State University, and now teaches at Mount Royal University, along with being an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Classics and Religion.
Jared's research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of the Greco-Roman world, with emphasis on early Christianity, ancient medicine, and Greek intellectuals who lived in the city of Rome. He has published articles on early Christian engagement with Greek intellectual culture in the Roman Empire, and ancient attitudes about introduced and invasive species of plants and animals.
Jared's first book, Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire: From Justin Martyr to Origen, was published in 2020 as part of the Inventing Christianity series published by Penn State University Press.
His second book, Medicine, Health, and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean, 500 BCE--600 CE: A Sourcebook, co-authored with Kristi Upson-Saia (Occidental College) and Heidi Marx (University of Manitoba), was published in 2023 by the University of California Press.
Jared's research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of the Greco-Roman world, with emphasis on early Christianity, ancient medicine, and Greek intellectuals who lived in the city of Rome. He has published articles on early Christian engagement with Greek intellectual culture in the Roman Empire, and ancient attitudes about introduced and invasive species of plants and animals.
Jared's first book, Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire: From Justin Martyr to Origen, was published in 2020 as part of the Inventing Christianity series published by Penn State University Press.
His second book, Medicine, Health, and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean, 500 BCE--600 CE: A Sourcebook, co-authored with Kristi Upson-Saia (Occidental College) and Heidi Marx (University of Manitoba), was published in 2023 by the University of California Press.
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Books by Jared Secord
The volume brings together textual sources—many hard to access and some translated into English for the first time—as well as artistic, material, and scientific evidence, including:
Medical treatises
Case studies
Artistic works
Material artifacts
Archaeological evidence
Biomedical remains
Funerary monuments
Miracle narratives
Spells and magical recipes
With substantial explanation of these varied materials—through background chapters, introductions to the thematic chapters, a timeline, and a glossary—the volume is accessible to a broad audience.
Readers will come away with a nuanced understanding of the illnesses people in ancient Greece and Rome experienced, the range of healers from whom they sought help, and the various practices they employed to be healthy.
Papers by Jared Secord
Chapter 1 demonstrates that a close partnership based on a common fascination with the classical past of Greece was established between members of the Roman ruling classes and an influential group of scholars in the first century BCE. Chapter 2 shows that the development of this partnership produced a worldview that emphasized the historical connections between Greece and Rome, and the united front that the two civilizations presented against barbarians and non-classical forms of Greek culture. Chapter 3 treats the growth of the partnership in the first and second centuries CE and the support that was provided to classicizing scholars by the powerful members of the Roman ruling classes, and the motivation that was at the same time being provided to the burgeoning classical revival by the challenges made against it by other Greek-speaking scholars, particularly Jews, Christians, and scholars who came from humble backgrounds. Chapter 4 shows that the marginalized status of Jewish, Christian, and Near Eastern scholars at Rome led them to mount attacks against the roots of the Greek tradition, and to suggest that Greece was a young civilization that had derived, if not plagiarized, all of its wisdom from the older civilizations of Egypt and the Near East. In response, classicizing scholars championed a Hellenocentric worldview that assigned to Greece a special status in the history of the world, and that ignored or denied any suggestions made about its youth, or the derivative nature of its wisdom."
Book Reviews by Jared Secord