The Theme of Illness in Sophocles’ Ajax

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Ido Israelowich

Abstract

This article examine the meaning and use of the term illness in Sophocles’ Ajax. It concludes that Sophocles perceived that the cause for Ajax impaired cognition was a result of somatic irregularity, much like the explanation of all ailments found in the works of the Hippocratic authors. Furthermore, as the play has been introduced about a half a century before the first Hippocratic works, it concludes that the view of illness which leads to madness was commonplace in the Greek world even before the rise of Hippocratic medicine.

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