Apollo Vs Agamemnon: The Plague in Ancient Greece was Divine Wrath
February 21, 2021
Smithian Apollo about shooting arrows of plague against Greeks to avenge his priest insulted by Agamemnon. Silver didrachm. Apollo Sminthios from Sminthos, a city in the Hellespont. Credit: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia
By Evaggelos Vallianatos
The case of the plague in ancient Greece may still give us a pose for reflection.
The Greeks gave diseases precise names. They called plague loimos (pestilence). They described disease, sorrow, and suffering as nosos, from which we have nosocomial (hospital) disease.
The plague made its first appearance among the Greeks as a weapon of divine wrath.