Traces of female genital mutilation in ancient Greek, Greco-Roman and Byzantine medical texts
Traces of female genital mutilation in ancient Greek, Greco-Roman and Byzantine medical texts

Summary/Abstract: This article provides evidence on the exercise of female genital mutilation in ancient Greek, Greco-Roman and Byzantine period. After an exhaustive research of the primary literature of those periods, only a few references were found describing the „surgical procedure“ and the causes that put a young woman to this excruciating torture. Bearing in mind the social context of the periods studied, along with the information provided by the ancient authors, it is presumed that clitoridectomy was not customarily performed in Greece, Rome and the Byzantine Empire, but was a procedure used in the rare cases of an abnormal condition.

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