Ancient philosophy: ethics, fate, and science
Weighing the souls of the dead Philosophy means the love of wisdom. But what does that mean? It's hard to separate philosophy from religion. And it's also hard to draw a [...]
Weighing the souls of the dead Philosophy means the love of wisdom. But what does that mean? It's hard to separate philosophy from religion. And it's also hard to draw a [...]
Birth of Aphrodite (from Pompeii, about 50 AD) Stories about love People have been falling in love for hundreds of thousands of years, since they were monkeys and not really [...]
Infanticide? Pasiphae holds the baby Minotaur What is infanticide? From the Sumerians down to the time of Augustine, all over Europe and Asia, most people agreed that if you had a newborn baby [...]
The Riddle of the Sphinx: Oedipus, wearing a traveler's hat, and the Sphinx asking her riddle The Sphinx's riddle: So the riddle the Sphinx asked Oedipus is: What goes on [...]
Papyrus with part of Sophocles' play Antigone written on it When did Sophocles live? Aeschylus is the first playwright whose plays survive, but Sophocles (ca. 496-406 BC) is the second. [...]
A later painting of Antigone and Oedipus, by Camille Felix Bellanger, in the 1800s. Oedipus at Colonus is a play written by Sophocles. It tells the story of what happened [...]
Oedipus Rex: The shepherd tells his story to Oedipus, while Jocasta listens in horror (now in the Getty Museum) Sophocles wrote this very famous play in the 400s BC. It [...]
Thebes bell in the shape of a person, 700 BC (Louvre Museum, Paris) In Greek mythology, Thebes was where Oedipus lived with his mother-wife Jocasta. It was where Oedipus' daughter [...]