Xenocrates wishes Aristoxenus health⁹

I have heard that, now that you have retired from the Lyceum ¹⁰ and departing widely from the topic of your known Harmonic Elements (Αρμονικά Στοιχεία) ¹¹, you are writing a text which you will possibly title The Lives and Views of the Most Eminent Physicians (Βίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν ιατρών εὐδοκιμησάντων) similar to your Biographies (Βιοι Ανδρων) written a few years ago, of which I recall with special pleasure those of Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, Plato and Thelestes ¹².

Knowing your work, I venture to predict that the content of your new book will boast the wisdom and other virtues of your previous works, and therefore I would like to give you a brief account of the life of my grandfather, Coriscus of Nisyrus, with a few details about his role during the Plague of Athens (Λοιμὸς τῶν Ἀθηνῶν) ¹³, as I hope you will include a chapter on him in your Lives.

If I were to summarize the life and legacy of my grandfather in the fewest possible words, I would say that there was no greater hero (ἤρως) during the Plague. By rating him as a hero I do not mean that he was a descendent of humanity's fourth generation, that of the men-heroes or demigods who, as Hesiod affirms in Works and Days (Εργα και Ημεραι), live under the rule of Cronus on the Isles of the Blessed (μακάρων νῆσοι) at the ends of the earth, where they can reap its sweet fruits three times a year ¹⁴. Neither do I claim that he was the offspring of a goddess and a mortal, as the Catalog of Heroes asserts to be their origin ¹⁵. Rather, I believe, as Aristotle says, that there are ordinary men who, when they must act, instead of resigning themselves, defenseless, to the role of puppets (νευρόσπαστα) of fate, stand against it and achieve virtues which we could call superhuman or even divine, to the point where their exploits are compared to those of the gods, and these he calls heroes. This is why, regarding people like my grandfather, those of us who are simple mortals, not heroes, come to think, like Priam before the exploits and virtues of his son, Hector, that they do not seem to be sons of a mortal man, but rather a god ¹⁶. That was my grandfather, along with all the physicians (ἰατροὶ) who for five long years fought against the Plague's three assaults. However, I must clarify the nuances: in addition to the moral hero, there is another hero in Aristotle, the tragic hero, the main character of a tragedy, whom I would prefer to simply call the protagonist (πρωταγωνιστής) ¹⁷, but he prefers to call a hero in this context: a man like us who, due to an error (ἁμαρτία) or pride (ὕβρις), undergoes an abrupt and catastrophic change of fortune and everything turns into adversity, filling the spectators with fear and compassion ¹⁸. Neither my grandfather nor the physicians who accompanied him in the fight against the Plague fit within this type of hero.

Herodotus classified the reports of his History (Ἱστορίαι), into those that were autopsies (αὐτοψία) and those of which he had only heard (ἀκοή) ¹⁹. My account of my grandfather's life belongs entirely to this second type of report, as I did not know him and yet, the atmosphere in my father's house was always full of his memory and conversations often revolved around his exploits. At the same time, the family kept documents (ἔγγραφα) from his student days and from his medical practice, documents which I have had copied so that you can confirm each of the events I narrate. I have the originals of these documents if you would like to verify the information directly from the corresponding sources.

My grandfather was born on the island of Nisyrus, between Cos and Rhodes, and, like so many of its inhabitants, he prided himself on being a direct descendent of Antiphus. Antiphus, together with his brother Phidippus, was featured in Homer's Catalogue of Ships (Νεῶν Κατάλογος) leading the fleet of 30 ships (νῆες) ²⁰ with which Nisyrus joined Hellas in his fight against Troy under the command of Agamemnon, the shepherd of men ²¹.

Ever since he was a child, my grandfather had wanted to practice medicine, because as he repeated fragments of The Iliad recited by the grammar teacher (γραμματιστής) with his grade school (δῐδασκᾰλεῖον) classmates, he had dreamed of achieving Machaon's glory ²², who Homer called a man worth many, since he was a physician ²³. Like so many children, he dreamed of being a warrior worthy of poetical praise. The phrase Idomeneus spoke to Nestor Nélida in The Iliad, telling him to save Machaon by removing him from the battlefield in his chariot after Paris wounded him in the back with an arrow, made him think that warrior physicians were even greater than plain warriors.

Since then and during his adolescence, my grandfather followed Machaon's trail in the literature and popular legends. Although some maintained that Machaon had died without descendants during the sacking of the walled city after he entered it in the horse's very belly ²⁴, my grandfather was able to prove that it was possible to visit Asclepieia (Ἀσκλήπεια) ²⁵ in Gerenia and Faras administered by Asclepiads (Ἀσκληπιάδης) ²⁶ who claimed to be direct descendants of Asclepius, the healing god, son of Apollo, through the line of Machaon. He therefore longed to study medicine there, but when he later discovered that in those Asclepieia, as well as in Epidauras ²⁷, there were no medical schools, but rather healing sanctuaries where he could be trained as a temple priest and participate in all the healing rituals of the Egcoimesis (ἐγκοίμησις) ²⁸, he desisted. My grandfather was not interested in religion or dreams, he wanted to be a physician.

My grandfather was not yet 19 years old when his father, my great-grandfather, died close to the ruins of Sybaris, shortly after the colony of Thurii was founded. This was during the fourth year of the 84th Olympiad ²⁹. My great-grandfather's role in the foundation of Thurii, in which Pericles as strategist (στρατηγός), the architect Hippodamus of Miletus, the sophist Protagoras of Abdera and Herodutus himself (who was to die there 18 years later) participated, was quite modest: he was one of the syntagmatarchis (συνταγματάρχης) ³⁰ of the taxiarchos (ταξίαρχος) Cleandrides, the same one of whom the Spartans say that, together with their Kind Plistoanax, betrayed them by accepting a bribe from Pericles to withdraw from the plain of Eleusis in Attica after occupying it in an attempt to support the Euboean and Megaran revolt against Athenian dominion using Peloponnesian forces ³¹. The fact is, that the new Thurian colonists wanted some fertile lands between the Aciris and Siris Rivers to which the inhabitants of Taras, ancient descendants of the Spartans on the other side of the gulf, felt they had more right. After a few years of disputes, including even several armed scuffles, both sides reached an agreement and, instead of fighting over the lands, together they founded the new and prosperous colony of Heraclea on them, and everyone was satisfied. However, by then my great-grandfather had died: without having taken part in any real battle, he was wounded in a ridiculous fashion by an arrow which was randomly shot even before one of the many skirmishes between neighbors in which he participated began. He died a few weeks later from his wound.

When my grandfather learned that, like Machaon, his father had been wounded by an arrow in cold blood and was later told of the circumstances around his death, he became a staunch pacifist. This change occurred long before the annual worship of Irene (Εἰρήνη) was instated and even before the Common Peace treaties (Κοινὴ Εἰρήνη) at the end of the Corinthian War ³². Gathering some ideas from Solon, for whom war, both civil as well as against outside forces, is always an indisputable sign that the polis (πόλις) is in a state of dysnomia (δυσνομια) ³³, my grandfather created his own thesis, which he validated both for the exterior world of the polis as well as the inner world of the psyche (Ψυχή): good polis government and a good walk in private life can only be achieved through just laws, through political debate for the life of the polis and ethical debate for private life.

Subsequently, he engaged with some of Pythagoras's pupils who were completely opposed to war, violence, sacrifices and, in general, any bloodshed ³⁴. If he were alive today, my grandfather would undoubtedly be affiliated with Eubulus' Peace Party and would approve of Isocrates' texts, whom he knew long before Isocrates spoke about Panhellenism and long before he asserted that it was necessary to make peace not only with the inhabitants of Chios, Rhodes, Byzantium and Cos, but also with all humanity ³⁵. In fact, before Diogenes of Sinope expressed it so beautifully, my grandfather already thought and behaved like a global citizen (κοσμοπολίτης) ³⁶.

Thus, my grandfather stopped dreaming of becoming a heroic warrior like Machaon and thought only of studying medicine. However, with no interest in religious healing, no longer having his father's financial support, and with no close relative to teach him medicine, his chances of reaching his childhood and adolescent dream of being a physician began to fade. He then learned that very close to his birthplace (πατρις), in Cos and Knidos, there were medical schools, both governed by Asclepiads who were descendents of Podalirius, and who were accepting, for a small stipend, students who were willing to learn and work hard, even if they were not sons of physicians.

I am not sure if you are aware of this, but the medical school in the city of Knidos is on the continent, in the Cariun Chersonese, while the one in Cos is located on the island by the same name. Both are almost the same distance from Nisyrus so, in light of their similar prestige, my grandfather wanted to leave the choice of school up to fate (τύχη), and determined that if he threw an ostrakinda game shell (ὀστρακίνδα) in the air and it landed showing its dark side, he would study in Cos, and if it landed showing its light side he would go to Knidos ³⁷. At first, and by the luck of the draw, he prepared to go to Knidos, but a few months later he changed his plan, as he was unable to leave because all the helmsmen (κῠβερνήτης) at that time were afraid of nearing the Carian coast due to the presence of undefeated coastal pirates who found easy refuge on the continent.

To reach the city of Cos by ship from Nisyrus, you must get to the entrance of the Ceramic Gulf: Cos is midway between Knidos on the right and Halicarnassus on the left, a city in which Greeks and Barbarians of Carian lineage coexist and blend their ancestors ³⁸. I am convinced that it was not a chance, accidental occurrence, as Aristotle thinks, that led him to Cos; he inevitably ended up there, drawn by Necessity (Ἀνάγκη) ³⁹.

Learning in Cos was based on head-to-head tutorial education: each professor was responsible for a maximum of three pupils, and through direct verbal teaching, would discuss the findings of the history and physical exam as he performed them, establishing theoretical lines of argumentation and postulating treatments which he would later communicate to the patients. The physical exam was based on the use of well-known "instruments": sight, hearing, smell, touch, the tongue and logical connections ⁴⁰. Students relied on the rather scarce books which these same professors had written and on copious notes (ὑπομνήματα) from the oral classes, taken by older students and which the new students copied and passed from hand to hand over and over on their waxed tablets ⁴¹. They also passed along papyri using the dialogue (διάλογοι) question-answer format like the one used in the theater, which simulated the professor questioning the pupil and the pupil always answering correctly ⁴². Several of these hypomnemata and dialogues have been kept in my family. I have requested that one of each be copied for you so that you can have an idea of what my grandfather's education was like.

The basic characteristic of the medicine taught in Cos could be summarized, according to my grandfather, in a maxim: "to alleviate suffering based solely on Nature (φυσισ)." This involved, above all, leaving rites and spells to the priests and magicians.

One of the Asclepiads in Cos highly valued my grandfather's interest in developing a set of theses on the diseases that survive in a given place, theses which all those in Cos shared, and dedicated extra time to tutoring my grandfather. Based on this collaboration, my grandfather wrote the text On Local Diseases (νοσηματα επιχωρια), which others have called On Endemic Diseases (νοσήματα ἔνδημα), that is, diseases which are more frequent or common in a given community or region. This, stated my grandfather in his treatise, could be due to certain characteristics which are peculiar to each place (τοποι): if the soil is naked and dry or forested and watered, low and hot or high and cold, or if its winds are warm or cold, or its water marshy, soft or hard or arising from rocky or salty and rough heights. But it could also be due to lifestyle peculiarities of those living in these places, such as whether, on the one hand, they are inveterate drinkers, eat more than one complete meal a day and are not inclined to work hard or, on the other hand, they love gymnastic exercises, are hardworking and are given to eating well and drinking little ⁴³.

I have here in front of me a copy of my grandfather's text. The manuscript was extolled and, although it was not completely derived from the author's personal experience, as my grandfather was still very young, it was praised not only for having gathered in one place all his professors' teachings and sayings regarding this type of diseases, but, above all, for the conceptual development of his thesis of grouping diseases which occur more frequently in certain communities as a result not of their location, climate, winds and water but rather their inhabitants' diet and lifestyle preferences ⁴⁴. This text was a decisive factor in his tutors considering my grandfather worthy of practicing the profession and, after pledging him to adhere to a strict code of conduct which they all had come to adopt ⁴⁵, he was admitted to the Asclepiad guild, even though he had no family ties to them.

When he was 25 years old, my grandfather left Cos and became a traveling physician (περιοδευτής) in various poleis of Attica and Boeotia. He lived and worked like this, going from one place to another, for three years, until he won first place in a contest run by the polis of Athens to name a public physician (δημιουργός) ⁴⁶ or, as they call them on the islands, a community physician (ἰατροὶ οἱ δαμοσιεύοντες) ⁴⁷. This was a physician who was given a basic salary in order for him to stop traveling, establish himself there and practice his profession free of charge for the poorest patients. He was allowed to charge a fee in other cases at the end of treatment, as long as this fee had been agreed upon previously with the patient or his family.

Despite being a metic (μέτοικος) ⁴⁸, within just a few years my grandfather garnered great prestige among his new countrymen: all who consulted him saw him as an excellent physician and all who interacted with him considered that he had achieved excellence (ἀρετή) ⁴⁹. He was so prestigious that Pericles himself requested his services on several occasions.

A few years later, in the second year of the 87th Olympiad ⁵⁰, war was declared against the Spartans. My grandfather was not recruited because, being 30 years old and a physician, he was needed more in the city than on the battlefield. His prestige among the common people as well as the more powerful families undoubtedly had an impact, but it is not improbable that Pericles himself, who by then had my grandfather as his physician and was aware of his pacifist activism, may have intervened to avoid his recruitment in order to avoid the difficulties he would have faced if, as expected, my grandfather would have refused to be deployed.

In the third year of the 87th Olympiad ⁵¹, during the second year of the War, a new disease emerged in the polis, with symptoms that were not linked to any known thing. From the beginning, my grandfather actively participated in patient treatment and observation and applied himself to studying the new disease, which was unlike any of the Endemic Diseases on whose knowledge and treatment he had built his prestige. It was so different, that my grandfather felt it necessary to create a separate classification group, which he called Epidemic Diseases (επιδημικές νόσοι). By giving this name to this new class of diseases, he wanted to emphasize the fact that, unlike the usual diseases in a region or city, this one had occurred unexpectedly and nobody in the polis had ever had anything like it. My father told me that my grandfather had once explained to him that he had chosen that name because it was a "visiting" disease, like the visit of an emperor to a town (βασιλικῆς ἐπιδημίας), during which a solemn sacrifice is always performed in honor of the visitor (ἐπιδήμια θύειν). He also told him that he had chosen that name because the rapidity of the contagion, the lethality of the disease and its catastrophic ability to disrupt community life resembled the effects of a civil war (πόλεμος ἐπιδήμιος).

After its first foray, the epidemic's "visit" ravished the city of Athens with two new waves: the next one was in the fourth year of the 87th Olympiad ⁵², and the last one was in the third year of the 88th Olympiad ⁵³. You may have heard everything I am telling you, but I detail the dates and facts because the collective memory is fragile and a little more than 100 years have passed. Five years after its arrival, the Plague was extinguished forever, but one of every three inhabitants of Athens and one of every two physicians were also extinguished during this time by the Plague ⁵⁴.

The physicians were among the first to contract the disease. They were in direct and constant contact with the patients, and perhaps because of this were the ones most severely affected ⁵⁵. My grandfather was one of the first to contract the Plague as well as one of the first to survive its onslaught. Once he recovered, he continued relentlessly with his work in favor of those affected by the new disease. He knew very early on that this disease showed no signs of responding to any balm, dressing, diet, exercise regimen, or purge and that, in short, there was no way to cure it. It was also evident to the rest of the physicians that their treatments had not the slightest effect on the progression of the disease; however, with increasing acumen, together they succeeded in finding symptomatic treatments that greatly alleviated the suffering caused by the disease: although they could not reduce its lethality, they could reduce its burden of pain. My grandfather recorded his experience in a new text which, of course, he named On Epidemic Diseases (επιδημικές νόσοι).

It is a bit paradoxical that someone like my grandfather, considered to be an expert on diseases which survive in a single place (endemic), should end up being the greatest expert in the history of Athens on diseases which occur in "visits" (epidemics), but that was his experience. I do not have the text of On Epidemic Diseases with me. I lent my only copy to Hippolytus of Taranto, and he has neither copied nor returned it. When I met him by chance in the market, he told me that the title my grandfather had given that paper was very confusing and not at all descriptive, and he even dared to say that that was why nobody had been interested in copying it.

"To begin with," he said, "the use of the term 'epidemic' (ἐπιδήμια) has always been ambivalent: Homer uses it as a noun to mean something like a 'stay' or 'residency' in a house or in another city ⁵⁶. On the other hand, Plato uses it to mean a ' visit,' or ' arrival some place,' as when he refers to the visits of sophists to Athens ⁵⁷. In contrast, Ion of Chios gave the title Έπιδημίεσ to his personal story of the foreign trips he made, although he himself was a foreigner in Athens ⁵⁸. Demosthenes, the orator, has used it in several passages in his speeches, sometimes to mean 'stay home,' to refer, for example, to remaining in Athens ⁵⁹, but other times to mean 'emigration,' for example, to indicate that someone leaves to go live in Megara ⁶⁰."

"The worst part," continued Hippolytus, "is that physicians, who are supposed to be the most precise in their definitions, maintain such different meanings of ἐπιδήμια that at times you cannot even understand them: sometimes they apply the adjective ἐπιδημικές to give something the literal meaning of 'passing through,' in which case an epidemic disease (ἐπιδημικές νόσοι) would be the equivalent of a transient disease, and its antonym (he said, posing as a grammarian) would be an incurable disease ⁶¹." "At other times," he affirmed, "physicians do not use the term as an adjective but rather a noun to name some of the physicians' activities, adding a professional bias to its popular meaning of 'visit' to refer to a physician's visit to a patient or a physician's visit to a city either to look for work or to improve his knowledge." "The ambivalence of the term among physicians does not end there," Hippolytus insisted, "they use it even to refer to a patient's visit to a physician's office ⁶²." "But until now, nobody had given ἐπιδήμια a meaning so strange and foreign to the spirit of the language as Coriscus of Nisyrus, 'your grandfather,'" said Hippolytus with a tinge of irony, "as he purports that the visit, the ἐπιδήμια, at least in this maintains a meaning close to the popular use, is not a patient's visit to a physician, or a physician's visit to a patient, or even a physician's visit to a city...but rather a disease's visit to a city. When had something like this been seen? Since when do diseases travel? Do they adhere to the laws of hospitality on their visits? Do they bring presents?" He was mocking. "Hippocrates himself," continued Hippolytus with a sarcastic tone, "'your grandfather's teacher,'" has at times used the term epidemic to refer to diseases which survive in the same place." "In fact," he said, reciting almost word for word from memory, "if one reads Hippocrates' Predictions (Προγινώσκων) carefully, when he says that you must consider the signs and symptoms of a disease and not disregard the disposition of the time of year when making predictions about always epidemic diseases (αἰεὶ ἐπιδημεόντων), he is not referring to diseases which 'come to visit,' but rather those which survive in the same place (endemic) ⁶³.

"In other parts of his work, Hippocrates does use the term epidemic in a different sense than endemic," discoursed Hippolytus, "but he calls them epidemic diseases not because they are 'visiting,' as Coriscus of Nisyrus purported, but rather because they indiscriminately attack the whole demos ⁶⁴." I could stand no more, Hippolytus had me riled, but he was holding back the final blow: the only use of ἐπιδήμιος he had not noted among physicians or rhetoricians (he, as I said, poses as a grammarian although he has not written a single text on the subject) was that adjectivized way of describing a disease as something that comes into a city from without, and that there was no "visiting disease" (επιδημικές νόσοι) there, he scoffed. "That obscure and ambivalent meaning," Hippolytus insisted now with an oratorical tone, hammering on my already open wound, "is a previously unheard-of use of επιδημικές which nobody understands."

Before I left without saying good-bye, he added that, in fact, a text had recently circulated with almost the same name, which everyone was interested in copying and which, although many affirmed that it was a direct work by Hippocrates, had certainly not been written by him. Rather, it had been written by medical apprentices in Piraeus practicing writing a clinical history in the best possible way as homework for their professor, a physician from Agrigento who has recently settled there and teaches almost free of charge. These clinical histories describe very precisely the visits of these physicians to their patients, which is why they have, together, been called Έπιδημίεσ ⁶⁵. His entire discourse filled me with anger; so much so, that I forgot to ask him when he would return my grandfather's text to me and returned home ill humored, recalling that, despite everything, Hippolytus certainly knows what he is saying ...and my grandfather's book will be lost to posterity if I do not manage to recover it from him.

Determined to get to the bottom of the issue, I borrowed the scrolls of the Έπιδημίεσ text that some attribute to Hippocrates and others to the pupils of the physician from Agrigento: the text has nothing to do with the term "epidemic" in the sense my grandfather gave of nonendemic diseases which arrive "to visit" in a human community, nor with Plagues, but rather, as Hippolytus says, with the visits of some traveling physicians to their patients. The Έπιδημίεσ scrolls only contain clinical history summaries of those patient visits with a few interesting discourses on the weather and the time of year in which they developed the illnesses, the meticulous care the patients received from their physicians and the way they progressed, some to the point of dying from diseases that have nothing to do with true epidemics. I do not think it is necessary to continue to insist that Hippolytus is mistaken; the concept of epidemic is better used in the title of my grandfather's text than in the title of the visiting physicians' text, but only the future use of the term will determine who wins this dispute ⁶⁶.

At about that time, during the second wave, Thucydides, a friend of my grandfather's, fell prey to the Plague. He survived. I have no explanation of the factors which influenced his having withstood the disease, but in my father's account, which I heard him repeat many times with the same enthusiasm, my grandfather's care always appeared as one of the main causes of his cure. My father would say that my grandfather watched over his friend for a long period and that during the most difficult stages of his suffering, he did not leave his side; that he instructed him in each phase of the disease and that he taught him the medical terms which he would later use in his description of the Plague in History of the Peloponnesion War (Ιστορία του Πελοποννησιακού Πολέμου).

However, Thucydides, as you well know, was not a physician, and although he tries to give his narration of the Plague the air of a technical report, he does not achieve this ⁶⁷ because he does not always use the specialized terms of the Asclepiades' jargon properly. He does not know how to use them; he received them on loan from my grandfather. I have Thucydides' text in front of me. The description of the Plague is found precisely in the second scroll. It seems to me, to say the least, very pretentious. According to him, anybody in the future will be able, from his description, to recognize the disease if it occurs again: "I will only describe what the disease was like," he says, "and I will clarify the things with which someone who studies it (σκοπῶν) would be less ignorant (μὴ ἀγνοεῖν) if it should attack again, knowing something beforehand (προειδὼς); because I myself was sick and saw others suffer" ⁶⁸. In reality, he boasts of his storytelling skills. I do not believe that a simple written explanation replaces years of experience of physicians who, like my grandfather, worked next to patients with the disease, were direct witnesses of the multiple symptoms (σύμπτωμα) ⁶⁹ which accompanied it, learned to recognize them and achieved the ability to diagnose it, which is the term which the Asclepiades use for the rational process of identifying the harmful process. Thucydides claims that his description alone, unsupported by practice, will allow people in the future to know that the Plague has returned, and that everyone will be able to identify it and be sure that it is the same one ⁷⁰. My father says that my grandfather never boasted of anything like this even though, as you know, if the Hippocratics emphasized anything it was not only the physicians' diagnostic ability but also their ability to make predictions. One of their mottos was, in fact, "declare the past (λέγειν τἀ προγενομένα), recognize the present (γινώσκειν τἀ παρεόντα) and predict the future (προλέγειν τἀ ἐσόμενα)," to which they always added what they considered to be their main motto: "with regard to diseases, put two things into practice (ὰσκεῖν): help (ὼφελεῖν) and do no harm (μὴ βλάπτειν)" ⁷¹.

To me, Thucydides' medical description is too poor to be able to base a diagnosis of the Plague on it, and its prognostic ability seems even worse. Reading it, I get the impression that his motley description of the Plague ended up inserted in his history of the Peloponnesian War as a digression from the main topic of the conflict ⁷². It seems to be more of a rhetorical piece aimed at discouraging the readers by heightening the most fearsome aspects of the disease, and I doubt very much that it really serves, from a medical point of view, to identify a reappearance of the disease. I can assure you that not only from a scientific description perspective but also a historical narrative and even a literary perspective, my grandfather's text on Epidemic Diseases greatly surpasses Thucydides' insert on the Plague in his history of the war. Unfortunately, my grandfather's text is still in someone else's possession, but I commit to having it copied once I recover it from Hippolytus.

From a medical point of view, Thucydides' text on the Plague is a vain attempt to provide a medical description based on the observations and experiences of someone who is not a physician, but rather a historian. In contrast, the other two times Thucydides names the Plague he speaks to aspects which were directly related to the war, and in this case he does it well, like a good chronicler. I think they are pertinent and well finished; I copy them here for you, although you may have access to the full text.

In the first scroll, referring to the calamities that struck Hellas during the war, Thucydides names the war itself and the human disasters it causes, adding earthquakes, eclipses, droughts, famine and, as a daunting epilogue, the Plague: "The Peloponnesian war lasted a very long time and, in its course, Hellas experienced such disasters as had never before occurred in a similar lapse of time. Never had so many cities been taken and devastated, some by the Barbarians and some by the Hellenes themselves, in wars against each other. There were several which, after their capture, changed inhabitants. Never had so many human beings been displaced, nor had so much human blood been shed either in the course of the war itself or as a result of civil wars. And stories which legend had related but had very rarely been confirmed by facts ceased to be incredible: earthquakes, for example, which prevailed over a large part of the earth and were extremely violent; solar eclipses which occurred more frequently than what has been recorded; great droughts, as well, in some areas with their consequent famines and, finally, the disaster that caused the most damage to Hellas: the pestilential disease" ⁷³.

The second mention of the Plague comes in the second scroll, which relates that, towards the end of that first summer of the war, the Athenian army led by Pericles invaded Megaride with all its troops, citizens and metics included. At the same time, the troops from the 100 ships of the naval expedition against the Peloponnese, having fulfilled their mission, were returning toward Athens, but learning of the nearness of the ground forces, decided to join them at Aegina: "This was the largest Athenian army ever to be gathered in a single body, because the city was still at the height of its strength and had not yet been struck by the plague" ⁷⁴. Thucydides says no more about the Plague in these two references. It is the narration of a chronicler, a historian, not of someone who seeks, with his language, to provide a medical report without having the experience to do so.

The third mention of the Plague in Thucydides' text, the one which I say is not even close to my grandfather's text, is found in the second scroll. Since, unfortunately, as I have told you, I do not have my grandfather's text on hand, as it is still in Hippolytus' possession, I will reproduce a few excerpts from Thucydides' description to at least serve as an illustration, so you can have an idea of the disease against which my grandfather and other physicians fought:

"Suddenly, and being in good health, people first experienced intense heat in the head (κεφαλής θέρμαι) along with reddening and inflammation of the eyes (ὀφθᾰλμόν ερυθήματα) and the inner part of the mouth; both the throat and the tongue immediately turned blood red (φλογωσις) and the patients' breath (πνεῦμα) was unnatural (ἄτοπον) and foul (δυσῶδες). In the next stage, they developed sneezing (πταρμός) and hoarseness (βράγχος) and the disease would quickly go down to the chest accompanied by a severe cough (βηχὸς). Next it would settle in the abdomen, which would churn, and bilious vomiting (ἀποκαθάρσεις χολῆς) would ensue, accompanied by great suffering (ταλαιπωρίας) and, in most cases, ineffectual retching (λύγξ) followed by violent spasms (σπασμός). Externally, to the touch, the body was not very hot (θερμὸν) and did not appear pale (χλωρόν) but rather reddish (ὑπέρυθρον), livid (πελιτνόν), accompanied by a rash (ἐξηνθηκός) characterized by small blisters (φλυκταιναισ) and ulcers (ἕλκε). However, internally, the patients felt consumed by such a heat (ἐκαίετο) that they could not stand to have the lightest cover or linen sheet on their skin, they wanted to be completely uncovered and would have liked to throw themselves into cold water. In fact, many of those who did not receive proper care threw themselves into cisterns, tormented (ξυνεχόμενοι) by an unquenchable (ἀπαύστῳ) thirst (δίψη), no matter how much they drank. They were constantly plagued by restlessness and insomnia (ἀγρυπνία) which never decreased. However, when the disease was at its peak (ἀκμάζωι), the body surprisingly seemed to resist the ravages of its attack. In fact, when, almost always on the seventh or ninth day, the patients died from the internal heat, they still had a little strength. For those who survived this first crisis of the disease, it then moved down to the intestines, producing acute ulceration along with violent diarrhea (διαρροίας), such that in this final stage most died from the weakening (ασθενειαν) it caused. The disease, starting from the head where it first lodged, descended until it spread through the whole body, and if they survived the worst, at the very least took over the extremities, leaving its marks there. It even attacked the private parts and fingers and toes, and many escaped with their life but lost these, and some also lost their eyes. In some cases, immediately after the apparently full recovery, the patients were affected by an overwhelming memory loss (λήθη), which treated all memories brutally, so that they did not recognize themselves or their friends" ⁷⁵.

Thucydides' dissertation on the disease, as you can see, is a bit obscure and repetitive. It lacks a physician's descriptive conciseness and the proper use of the Asclepiads' jargon. Thus, I repeat, it ends up being more of a rhetorical piece. However, the part which could lend itself to a greater rhetorical display, the one devoted not to the medical aspects of the disease but to its social consequences ended up being, paradoxically, much clearer and more succinct. My grandfather, on the other hand, does not say anything about this in his text, as his viewpoint was a bit biased, aimed only at the patients and the disease, while Thucydides, a good chronicler after all, shows a genuine interest in describing the disease's effects on society. My grandfather, for example, as part of his special sense of duty and staying faithful to his oath as an Asclepiad, never asks himself if a patient is a citizen of Athens or a metic or a slave; he is only interested in the person's provenance when it is relevant from an endemic disease (one that survives in a certain place) perspective. Thucydides, with another viewpoint, is globally interested in the problem of the effects of the disease on the life of the polis, which is at the same time political and, as Aristotle would now call it, economical ⁷⁶.

In fact, of them all, only Thucydides was able to glimpse the relationship between the war and the disease, describing the nexus between the invasion of the khora (χώρα) by the Peloponnesian League, the subsequent displacement of the farmers and cattle herdsmen to the city (where they arrived seeking refuge within its walls, against which they built improvised cabins), and the progression of the Plague. The asty (ἄστυ) ⁷⁷ was not prepared to receive and shelter, much less feed, this many new inhabitants. Overcrowding and famine were complete, and this was coupled with the Plague which spread rapidly among the refugees ⁷⁸ and then reached the rest of the city. It is very possible that the Plague started there, among the people displaced by the war, overcrowded in the battered huts erected next to the long walls (Μακρά Τείχη) which at that time protected the road to Piraeus ⁷⁹ and not, as some said, on the route to Piraeus due to the Spartans placing poison (φαρμακα) in this area's cisterns, which still did not have public springs ⁸⁰.

Just as the disease did not respond to doctors' treatment, neither did it respond to the prayers (εὐχαί) or sacrifices to the gods (θῠσῐ́αι). In a short time, the city's inhabitants, finally overcome by the calamity, stopped seeking relief from their suffering in religious practices ⁸¹.

In the city, overwhelmed by the Plague, the rules of coexistence cracked rapidly. Ownership of livestock, tools, plows, weapons and dwellings changed hands from one day to the next with no need for a holdup; you just had to occupy a house in which all the inhabitants had died, and the easiest way to vacate the house was by disposing of the bodies on the street pyres that other relatives had already prepared for the funereal rituals for their dead ⁸². Many chose to think that, since death was near and there was no way to escape it, the best thing to do was to enjoy the few days of good health and life that might be left to the fullest and, "judging that godliness and ungodliness were the same," says Thucydides, they had no qualms about committing countless misdeeds because "nobody expected to live long enough to be held accountable and pay the penalty for their crimes" ⁸³.

It is at this point that my grandfather's remarks turn not just toward the patients and their symptoms, but toward the city sick with δυσνομια: just as he helped, as much as possible, those who were suffering, also aware that medical science did not have sufficient knowledge and resources to combat the disease and that its effects went beyond the patient's body to his psyche and even further to the very body and organization of the community, he dedicated his efforts also to battling against the disorganization the Plague had brought on the polis. After realizing that the disease rarely attacked twice, and that, if it did, it never had a fatal outcome ⁸⁴, he organized community health brigades to care for the sick, helped by those who, like himself, had survived the disease. He organized the cleaning of public wells to keep the distribution of water as constant as possible; he organized food distribution campaigns for the refugee families; set up group shifts to guarantee, without neglecting the funeral rites, the appropriate disposal of the bodies; and, in each of the 139 demos of the 10 original tribes (φυλαι) of the polis ⁸⁵, he created community work groups which bolstered many to look forward to the end of the Plague and, above all, to avoid falling into the excesses of those who had lost all hope and all moral restraint. In a city where everything was chaotic, my grandfather was a hero, maintaining order and hope through collective work for others.

The Athenians of that time attributed the Plague in Athens to Apollo Smintheus ⁸⁶. Before undertaking the war, the Spartans were known to have sent a delegation to Delphi to ask Apollo if it would be advisable for them to go to war, and the god's answer had been very clear: "If you fight with all your strength, victory will be yours." And he went even further: through the Pythia, he offered to help the Spartans in the fight, even if they did not call upon him ⁸⁷. Thus, when the Plague came, the common citizens, who knew everything about the Delphi prophecies regarding the war backwards and forwards, thought that the god's omen was being fulfilled, and that this was his way of helping the Spartans and the Peloponnesian League to defeat Athens and the League of Delphi. In addition, they all knew the supposedly prophetic ancient verse: "A Dorian war will come, and the Plague with it." Nobody remembered anymore who had said it and, although some tried to refute the prophecy arguing that the verse did not say "A Dorian war will come and the Plague (λοιμός) with it," but rather "A Dorian war will come and famine (λιμός) with it," the prevailing opinion was that the prophecies were, in fact, being fulfilled ⁸⁸.

Thucydides affirms that the Plague began in Ethiopia and, from there, through Egypt, it was progressively disseminated until it reached Athens. He describes its progression as though it were a process of nature, like a tornado (ανεμοστρόβιλος); however, most of his countrymen did not believe his Ethiopian thesis and much less his natural thesis (φυσικός): for them, the origin of the Plague was, as I said, Apollo Smintheus, a thesis which was much more believable than the Ethiopian one since from early childhood we all learned in our first readings that, although The Iliad supposedly began with Achilles' anger ("Sing, oh goddess, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus "), the true beginning was a plague, the oldest plague we remember, a plague derived from the wrath (μῆνιν) of Smintheus against the Acheans, the anger of the gods against men ⁸⁹.

While my grandfather and a few others, like Socrates, performed the rituals to avoid judgements and sentences at the Areopagus, they did not really believe that the gods could affect men's fate or tip the balance of a war, attacking the enemy with the arrows of the Plague, as in the first song of The Iliad. My grandfather told my father that Socrates lived such an orderly life that he was one of the few in the city who did not get sick with the Plague, with no need for the gods ⁹⁰. This perhaps sealed his fate: a quarter century after the Plague ended, he was condemned to drink hemlock due to his ungodliness.

The tail end of the Plague epidemic also pummeled Pericles and he called my grandfather to help him in his illness. No patient is the same as another, my grandfather would say ⁹¹, but among those affected by the Plague, Pericles' case, he said, was one of those furthest from the usual pattern: without having all the symptoms of severity of the typical clinical pictures, he developed a slow consumptive process that my grandfather was unable to stop, and which led to the strategist's death. After the failure of the expedition to Epidaurus, Pericles had been overthrown. Gossip had it that they had most probably tried to conquer Epidaurus to take Asclepius from there to Athens with the strange idea of the son undoing what his father had done ⁹². This is not true. Others say that it was Sophocles, the tragedian, who was finally able to bring Asclepius to Athens, but this was after the Plague had passed, and perhaps with the idea of having a god to invoke if it should return ⁹³. Except for Smintheus, there was no god to blame for the damage and whom to implore that the damage would not be greater. In this regard, Asclepius is a strange god: he does not cause harm, he does not need to be implored to not cause harm, he just needs to be invoked to remedy the harm decreed by other gods ⁹⁴.

At any rate, it was still strange that Pericles should have embarked on such an adventure with such a trivial argument. To his benefit, after having been overthrown following the failure at Epidaurus, the new government did not govern in the midst of the chaos caused by the Plague, and the crisis reached such proportions that when new elections were called, some rich friends paid the heavy fine levied on Pericles so that he could run in the election, and he won once again. I am convinced that Pericles attacked Epidaurus because he expected to ingratiate himself with the Athenian citizens through a victory, which he expected to be quick, against the Peloponnesian League. I do not believe the hoax that he hoped to protect us with Asclepius, as Pericles was not a fervent believer, although we should not forget that, in their worst moments, men turn their eyes toward the gods in search of help or comfort. In fact, on his deathbed and close to the end, Pericles showed my grandfather an amulet that one of the women who cared for him had attached to his neck, as though to say: "You with your science and I, in addition, with this" ⁹⁵.

According to my grandfather's story, the few close friends who had survived the Plague surrounded Pericles on his deathbed and, thinking he was in a coma, began to praise the dying man's feats and political legacy out loud. Suddenly, Pericles opened his eyes wide and with a broken voice said to them: "Everything you have said about me you can attribute to luck, not to me: any other general, with the help of luck, would have obtained similar achievements; but with all your talk, you left out the only thing I really care about: no Athenian has had to mourn because of me" ⁹⁶. This phrase was, actually, a half-truth, said my grandfather, because while it was true that Pericles always acted justly and nobody ever had to mourn for a loved one directly because of him, however, he did take many men to war, and through war to death, and many Athenian widows and orphans owed their widowhood and orphanhood to him. But we must not forget that my grandfather's pacifism never condoned anyone who promoted or approved of war, not even his own father, I do not believe.

In the fourth year of the 88th Olympiad ⁹⁷, just after overcoming the last wave of the Plague, which was not to return, Sophocles presented his work, Oedipus the King (Οἰδίπους τύραννoς) ⁹⁹ for the first time in the theater, as part of the Great Dionysia celebration (Διονύσια τὰ Μεγάλα) ⁹⁸. My grandfather attended the performance at the Theater of Dionysus with Thucydides. My father was still very young, he would have been about thirteen years old and, of course, could not attend the performance nor the religious events, but he enthusiastically recalled the conversation that ensued when my grandfather and Thucydides returned home and spent the afternoon there discussing the shows they had seen that morning. They talked most of all about Oedipus the King, which at that time was just called Oedipus; years later, the τύραννoς was added to differentiate it from another one of Sophocles> Oedipuses, Oedipus at Colonus (Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ). That afternoon they did not focus on the myth, which everyone knew, but rather on the form Sophocles gave it, as the plot begins, strangely, at the end, when Oedipus is already King, and as the play unfolds, he himself takes charge of the investigation and begins to uncover the past until he arrives at the full knowledge of who the King was who assassinated the King, bringing the plague to Thebes: himself. With this anagnorisis (ἀναγνώρισις) ¹⁰⁰, the tragedy for Oedipus and his own is unleashed. They praised Sophocles' good move in beginning Oedipus the King in the same way that Homer begins The Iliad: with a plague, a plague which is, on the one hand, the most ancient plague we remember and, on the other hand, the most painful and recent public event, more painful even than the war. By including the plague at the beginning of his play, Sophocles forced the audience ¹⁰¹ to reconsider everything that had happened before the play began, forcing them to bring to mind what they knew about the myth, especially what they had learned with the γραμματιστής, and, besides, being a current event, it made the audience connect immediately with the plot. Neither in Oedipoda (Οἰδιπόδεια) ¹⁰² nor in the Odyssey, when the hero visits Hades and encounters Epicasta, Oedipus's mother and wife, and tells her his story, is any Plague related to Oedipus mentioned ¹⁰³; it was Sophocles' creative genius which made the two events contemporaries. The strength of this association between Oedipus' story and the Plague is so strong (this digression is now my own), that, after Sophocles's Oedipus, we have grown accustomed to viewing the story of the Plague intertwined with the myth, as though it had always been like that. Undoubtedly, Sophocles wanted to give his story modernity and at the same time warn his countrymen about the effects a fortuitous event like this one brings on not only an individual's health, but also on the community and city government's health. My father tells that the two friends bade each other good-bye late in the day, after mentioning that the other two tragedies presented by Sophocles that morning had not interested them, and neither had his satirical play, but they did sharply criticize the fact that Philocles, Aeschylus's nephew, had won first prize, instead of Sophocles, whose tetralogy held second place.

I have strayed a bit from the topic of my grandfather's life, as I could not overlook a memory that had such an impact on my father: that conversation between the two old friends, who would not be friends again, throughout that afternoon in the family home, strangely moved him, so much so that he often returned to the topic, repeating the same story to those of us who already knew it, and did not hesitate to tell it to anyone willing to stop a bit to hear it. Please forgive the digression since, as you can see, I have done the same with you that my father used to do with whoever was willing to hear him.

You may ask why, despite the friendship that united them, Thucydides does not name my grandfather even once in all his extensive recapitulation of the Plague of Athens in his History of the Peloponnesian War. I suppose it was a sort of retaliation (τιμωρία) related to a testimony which, as an expert physician, my grandfather gave before the Areopagus Council (βουλή). There may not be anything more powerful, able to destroy even the strongest friendship, than coming before the Areopagus Council, having been called as a witness for the opposing party ¹⁰⁴. The fact was that a relative of Thucydides, a distant relative, even, was accused of murder after leaving a day laborer abandoned in a well as a punishment for having quarreled with one of his slaves. The day laborer could not get out of the well because he was tied up, and when they went to rescue him a few days later it was too late: he had died of cold and hunger ¹⁰⁵. How long can a human being survive without any food at all? How long can he survive if, in addition, he does not have access to any liquid other than the scant raindrops he is able to trap in his open mouth? How long can he survive outdoors in the middle of winter?, were some of the archon’s questions. My grandfather answered these and other similar questions honestly. He did not have all the answers and, on occasion, asserted that he had not had the opportunity of observing a similar case to the one presented in the question but, in these cases, he asked for permission to answer based on the authority of one of the Asclepiads, if they had recorded their own experience in writing. Overall, he was able to answer most of the archon’s questions based on his own experience, and thus my grandfather’s answers meant the conviction of the accused and the end of the long and fertile friendship which had united him with Thucydides in the past. Four years after these events, during which time there was no reconciliation, despite my grandfather’s unsuccessful attempts, Thucydides died.

Six years after Thucydides's death, my grandfather died unexpectedly. He was murdered by some thieves in front of his house, next to a cistern where he had gone to drink water. They wanted to steal his himation (ἱμάτιον) ¹⁰⁶. Some said the thieves were poor metics who lived outside the city walls, but my father knew that it was exactly the opposite: while some slaves (δοῦλος) from a neighboring house tried to contain the blood that gushed out of my grandfather's chest, the metics chased off the thieves. He was 70 years old and had survived the Plague, the return of the Plague and the second return of the Plague, and had also survived the slander of the thirty tyrants who did not love him. His death was unexpected, he was very healthy and just as active professionally and intellectually as during the time of the Plague. I belive it was his fate.

Aristotle, however, used his unusual death to show that fate does not exist, or at least that not everything is completely determined. Although Aristotle was born 20 years after the war ended, he heard tell of the physician who had survived the three attacks of the Plague of Athens but died at the hands of some thieves as he walked towards a fountain to drink water. Was his death, under these exact circumstances, a result of chance or fate? Or, in other words, was the event that ended in his death necessary or was it accidental? In one of his conferences, Aristotle asks himself if the death of Coriscus ¹⁰⁷, my grandfather, was necessary or contingent, and divides the problem posed by the question into two facets: if the question is a general question about death, certainly the same syllogism would have to be applied which he at times illustrated with Socrates: "All men are mortal, Coriscus is a man, therefore, Coriscus is mortal." From this perspective, Coriscus will necessarily die. But this logical deduction says nothing about the circumstances: Will he die from disease? Will he die accidentally? Will he die violently? This perspective is not so general anymore, it is very particular, it refers to the exact moment in which my grandfather encounters some thieves who had also gone to drink at the fountain, and the opportunity for theft presents itself, ending in murder. "Will Corisucs die?" asks Aristotle, placing himself a few steps prior to the process that led to his death. The answer is obvious: "If he leaves the house." But this answer raises another question: "Will he leave?", with its respective answer: "If he goes to the fountain to drink water"… and so forth: "Will he go to the fountain to drink water?"… "If he is thirsty"…"Will he be thirsty?"... "If the food is spicy." For Aristotle, it is obvious that, at some point, this linking of necessities which he terms cause and/ or fate will end, as a principle will be reached that does not fall back on something else; it will end at a principle that occurs solely by chance, accidentally, by coincidence (ἔτυχεν), and there will be no other cause in the generation of this principle. Let us suppose that, in this case, the next question is: "Does he like spice?" and the answer is "yes," but the answer to the next question: "Is there spice in the house?" depends on such a list of incidentals that chance begins to play an essential role ("Did the slave who does the marketing buy spice the last time he went to market?" "Did the guests at the symposium yesterday eat all the spice or did they not?"... and so on ad infinitum).

It happened that the timeline which ended with my grandfather at the fountain at the same time as the thieves' timeline led to certain events. Could it have happened another way? The answer is a resounding "Yes": my grandfather could have been delayed a few minutes in the doorway to greet a neighbor from afar or to see how the lilies were growing in the garden. But he did not do this, and he coincided with the thieves at the fountain and what happened, happened. Aristotle insists that, despite appearing, in retrospect, to have been absolutely necessary, in reality it was something accidental. According to Aristotle, the appearance of necessity arises from the fact that each retrospective question has only one answer and each answer leads to a new question with only one answer. In fact, it is impossible to answer any question, such as "Is there spice in the house?" both affirmatively and negatively at the same time. When all the questions are taken and ordered from past to present, necessity appears to be established. However, according to Aristotle, if we look at events towards the future, we can see how accidental and unnecessary an occurrence is: Could somebody assert today, based on a "yes" answer to the question of whether there is spice in the house, that as a result of this tomorrow afternoon a man will die next to a fountain at the hand of some thieves? Aristotle affirms that we cannot know what has not yet occurred, but I insist that it was fate, and although I accept, along with Aristotle and Agathon, that not even the gods can change the past ¹⁰⁸, I go even further: not even the gods can change the future. Zeus himself must obey the Moirai ¹⁰⁹. There is an asymmetry in knowledge: we can know going backward if we know the present events, but even if we know them well, we cannot know going forward. For the gods, however, both the past and the future, and between these two the present which flows, are amply known: all three are already determined by fate.

I heard from my father of the fear that many times accompanied my grandfather and other physicians during the three assaults of the Plague of Athens. In some of his stories he even described to me moments of real terror, such as the day a crowd mutineed in front of his office, ready to lynch two metics and a slave who were sick with the Plague, and had arrived in the high city from the walls of Piraeus seeking help. My grandfather went out to face them with just his words and managed to calm them when they were ready to burn the house, with the sick people and two physicians caring for them inside. Listening to my father's stories about certain episodes in my grandfather's life, I always asked myself if it was possible to be brave when gripped by fear, if it was possible to continue being a hero in spite of the terror, if only the fearless could be heroes. It was only when I met Aristotle that I was able to understand it. Although I do not agree with his thesis on fate, his handling of the virtues has helped me understand the true extent of the actions of physicians like my grandfather. We can call them heroes, but the description falls short. The heroes in The Iliad and the tragic poets seem to always advance imperturbably toward their destiny. They are heroes, they are already made like that, that is their structure, their lives are built on a set of skills with which they arrived in the world, or on gifts from the gods, and all of this makes them superior to common mortals from the outset and capable of the boldest actions. But my grandfather and the physicians who accompanied him were not heroes, they were not born, like Ulysses, endowed with unequaled sagacity, nor like Achilles, endowed with foolproof courage or like Ajax with a colossal size. They were mere mortals, like us. They were not born heroes, they became heroes. They did not perform exploits because they were born heroes, the feats they carried out made them heroes. Despite the fear and terror, or precisely because of these things. Being descendants of the race of ephemerals rather than the race of the heroes or immortal gods is what makes their deeds even more heroic. To have experienced the fear and dread which always assault mortals in situations of complete uncertainty or threat with no possible defense and still have acted as they did in favor of other human beings despite the risk to which they were exposed, and which in many cases ended their lives, is what makes them heroes. A pesar del miedo y del terror, o precisamente por eso.

Every virtue, says Aristotle, is an intermediate point between two extremes. Generosity, for example, is opposed on the one hand to stinginess and on the other to squandering. Courage, continuing with Aristotle, is completely contrary to cowardice, but also to audacity. The coward, gripped by fear, does not carry out the task assigned by his duty and hides or flees. At the other extreme, a person with audacity performs his task without fear but thoughtlessly, and the results may be disastrous, putting his life and that of those with him at risk. The truly brave person is afraid, and that fear forces him to be moderate and prudent and, above all, to reason: despite the fear, he fulfills his duty and does it in a reasoned and precise fashion, taking care of those who accompany him and of himself ¹¹⁰. A courageous man may end up giving his life in the fulfillment of his duty, but not as a result of thoughtlessness or lack of expertise, only inasmuch as there was no other possible action. The clear example of all I am saying is found in the deeds of the physicians who, like my grandfather, combatted the Plague of Athens throughout the five long years its yoke lay on the city.

Now that all of this is history, now that people do not lock themselves in their homes for fear of the Plague, and even invite friends over for dinner and carry out symposia (συμπόσιον) ¹¹¹, now that the suffering of that time seems so far away and only indirectly affects a few, as there is no one alive at this time who experienced the Plague, I believe this is the time to remember those heroes who, like my grandfather, fought for years to contain the havoc caused by the Smintheus (I insist that I do not believe in the Physis theory). The true tragic heroes walk toward their destiny and fulfill it knowing that they are going to offer their lives, and they even oppose the gods, with fear but aware that their gamble is for the mortal race. This is why I believe my grandfather deserves a place in your book, Lives and Views of the Most Eminent Physicians.