I was so intrigued by Jennifer Park’s post on curdled milk and Shakespeare that I decided to look whether there were Greek and Roman precedents. As I read Jennifer’s post, I could not recall any references to curdling of breast-milk in ancient texts. However, quick searches with the help of the Digital Library of Greek Literature (the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae), sure enough, led me to passages on ‘cheesy’ breast-milk that blocks ducts. The physician Soranus (turn of the first and second centuries AD), in his description of women’s milk, writes that one must look out for the following characteristics:

Colour; smell; composition; consistence; and with regards to its taste, whether it changes with time… Consistence and thickness: it should be moderately thick. For fluid, thin and watery milk is not nutritious and may disturb the bowels; while thick and cheesy milk is hard to digest and, in the same way as food that has been partially chewed, it blocks up the pores (i.e. ducts) and, as it occupies the main passages of the body, it is a danger to life. [Soranus, Gynaecology 2.22].

The word I translate as ‘cheesy’ is turōdēs, from the verb turoō, make into cheese curdle. Note that ‘cheesy’ in relation to breast-milk has nothing to do with taste and smell: it is all about consistence. Curdling of milk in a woman is an extremely dangerous condition. Soranus compares it to choking, when half-chewed food gets stuck in airways. It can lead to death. Other ancient medical writers concur with Soranus: cheesy breast-milk is unhealthy for the woman and a sign that she is sick.

But what exactly constitutes cheesy breast-milk? Conveniently, Soranus gives two easy ways to find out. First, one should drop a small amount of milk onto a smooth surface such as a nail or a bay leaf. If the milk ‘congeals like honey and remains motionless then it is thick’. The second test involves dropping milk dropping milk into twice the amount of water: one will know whether the milk is thick if:

the milk does not disperse and sink down after a while, so that, when the water is poured out, one finds around the bottom [of the jar] a substance that is cheesy, thick and hard to digest.

I must say that it was very difficult for me not to make a retrospective diagnosis here. Surely, Soranus was simply describing mastitis or blocked ducts. Yet something was not quite right. There was no description of the raging fever that accompanies mastitis. Then Soranus was not only referring to curdling of the milk within the breast – the constitution of little lumps which the modern reader could so easily interpret as signs of inflammation – he was also referring to curdling outside the breast. Woman’s milk should not curdle.

Interestingly, when they discuss other types of milk, the ancients do not consider ‘cheesy’ to be a bad characteristic – quite the contrary. Cow’s, goat’s, ewe’s milk should be made into cheese, of which Greeks and Romans were very fond. Now, Greeks and Roman regarded women as very close to beasts: Pandora, the first woman, had the mind of a bitch after all. They always feared that the wild, animal side of women would take over. What was seen as positive in female animals should be feared in women: woman’s milk should not turn into cheese.

To go further in this line of enquiry, I will need to look into metaphorical uses of the word ‘curdling’ in ancient texts. This is beyond the scope of this post. I would like, however, to point to one such metaphorical use. It is in a passage of the Bible text Job, which was translated into Greek in antiquity (as part of the famous Septuagint project). Job laments all the disasters that have befallen him and cries out to God:

Remember that you moulded me as clay and that you shall turn me again to earth. Did you not pour me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese? [Job 10:10]

As I am no Bible scholar, I consulted interpretations of this passage. According to some readings, Job is here referring to the process of procreation, when milk/semen curdles to form an embryo. Remember that in the ancient world, milk and semen were thought to be concocted blood. Curdling of blood/milk/semen is to be expected in the formation of an embryo but not when a woman is nursing. In this context, it would be wrong to read references to ‘curdling of woman’s milk’ merely as mastitis or milk that has gone sour. There is something much more serious at play, a subtle web of metaphors and connotations that leads us to Pandora/Eve and her similarity to wild beasts.