Tag: Sophocles
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From Sophocles to the frontline
Alexandra Pliakopanou Ioannina, Greece Ulysses and Neoptolemus Taking Hercules’ Arrows from Philoctetes. François-Xavier Fabre, 1800, Musée Fabre. Via Wikimedia. In the deserted misty land of Lemnos, a wailing voice echoes, emanating from a wounded warrior abandoned by his comrades nine years ago. Philoctetes, the titular character of Sophocles’ 409 BC play and once a…
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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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Medicine in Greek mythology
JMS PearceHull, England, UK Some of the earliest ideas about health and disease lie in Greek mythology. The Greeks of prehistory told, retold, and often remoulded their tales of immortal gods and goddesses that were imaginative, symbolic creations. Stories of the gods probably started with Minoan and Mycenaean writers of the eighteenth century BC. These…