The Love That Kills Heracles loved Iole and because her father would not give her to him in marriage, he killed her father and other members of her family. His wife Deianira was afraid to lose him to the younger Iole, so she gave him a robe that she thought was a love charm but was in fact dipped in poison, causing Heracles to die in extreme agony. Quotes: Ah, […]
Read moreTag: Sophocles
“Philoctetes” by Sophocles
Perhaps this man is as well born as any, second to no son of an ancient house. Yet now his life lacks everything, and he makes his bed without neighbors or with spotted shaggy beasts for neighbors. His thoughts are set continually on pain and hunger. He cries out in his wretchedness; there is only a blabbering echo, that comes from the distance speeding from his bitter crying. There is […]
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“Ajax” by Sophocles
Quotes of Characters: Athena Who was more full of foresight than this man [Ajax], Or abler, do you think, to act with judgment? Odysseus None that I know of. Yet I pity His wretchedness, though he is my enemy, For the terrible yoke of blindness that is on him. I think of him, yet also of myself; For I see the true state of all us that live– We are […]
Read more“On Old Age” by Cicero
[Original Latin Title: Cato Maior de Senectute] A treatise extolling the virtues of mental pursuits and horticulture in defense of old age against its alleged disadvantages, “first, that it withdraws us from active pursuits; second, that it makes the body weaker; third, that it deprives us of almost all physical pleasures; and, fourth, that it is not far removed from death.” Cicero and his friend Atticus, to whom he dedicated […]
Read more“Sophocles I” by Sophocles
The Theban Plays by Sophocles (aka the Oedipus Cycle) consist of three plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. Oedipus was a King of Thebes in Greek mythology who was prophesied by Apollo to kill his father and marry his mother unwittingly, based on whose story Freud developed the concept “Oedipus Complex”. The main theme of Sophocles’ plays, however, is not patricide nor incest, but the tragic lack […]
Read more“Electra” by Sophocles
Quotes: “Deceit was the plotter, Lust the slayer, two dread parents of a dreadful phantom, whether it was god or mortal that did this deed.” And then think what manner of days I pass, when I see Aegisthus sitting on my father’s throne; when I look on him wearing the very robes which my father wore and pouring libations at the hearth where he killed him; and when I see […]
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