Un caso di schiavitù ‘molto particolare’: il medico Menecrate e i suoi pazienti douloi

The sources on Menecrates of Syracuse, physician who lived around the middle of IV century BC, are late. The main, Athenaeus, using comic and erudite traditions, reports that Menecrates, surnamed Zeus, used to ask the patients, after healing, to become his slaves adopting the name and the costume of a god. This paper considers this ‘particular’ case of slavery, verifying whether the story can be plausible.