Tag: Oedipus
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Ancient Greek plague and coronavirus
Patrick Bell Belfast, Northern Ireland Plague in an Ancient City by Michael Sweerts, ca 1650. Credit Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Introduction Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War have been termed “the three earliest, and arguably most influential, representations of the plague in Western narrative.”1 This…
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Saint kills parents, erects hospital, and shares bed with a leper
Sally Metzler Chicago, Illinois, United States Masolino da Panicale, Musée Ingres, Montauban. Fig. 1: Attributed to Franciabigio, c.1515, Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917. The Italian Renaissance artist Franciabigio has illustrated a horrendous crime of passion (fig. 1). He depicted the moment when Saint Julian, consumed with false jealously, killed…