Asklepios sits between his daughter Hygieia and a man. This Gallery will take you to the well celebrated world of medicine. In Homeric poetry doctors are precious, valued and well respected. As Idomeneus says to Nestor in Iliad 11.514–551: “A physician is worth more than several other men put together, for he can cut out arrows and spread healing herbs.” (Sourcebook[1]) In Iliad Scroll 4, when Menelaos is wounded, Agamemnon… Read more
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath and this contract. Our Book Club readings for January are from Hippocrates, the so-called “Father of Medicine”. In the surviving treatises (which may have been by Hippocrates himself, or by his followers) we can see that instead… Read more
The Apology is one of the so-called Early Dialogues of Plato.[1] In it, Socrates makes his own defense of the accusations he had received for corrupting the youths and introducing new gods in the city of Athens. To start with, it is interesting to note that this dialogue does not take a proper noun (the name of one of the characters in the dialogue concerned) as a title but chooses… Read more
We were excited to welcome back Leonard Muellner for an Open House entitled “A French Book on Ancient Greek Diseases and Thoughts about Translating it into English.” The event took place on Thursday, December 17 at 11:00 a.m. EST and was recorded. The translated version of the book under discussion is: Mirko D. Grmek. 1991. Diseases in the Ancient Greek World. Johns Hopkins. Baltimore. You can watch the recording on… Read more
This latest exploration of Core Vocabulary terms from The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours[1] and the associated Sourcebook[2] is esthlos [ἐσθλός] “‘genuine, good, noble’; synonym of agathos.” The first thing I noticed is that it is far less frequent than agathos. In poetry I wondered if it was employed for metrical reasons (two syllables, starting with a long, as opposed to three syllables starting with two short) or whether… Read more