Īccording to Diogenes Laërtius, the Greek Atomist philosopher died aged 109 as he was on his deathbed, his sister was greatly worried because she needed to fulfill her religious obligations to the goddess Artemis in the approaching three-day Thesmophoria festival. The king's physician, Ctesias, reported that Mithridates survived the insect torture for 17 days. The Persian soldier who embarrassed his king, Artaxerxes II, by boasting of killing his rival, Cyrus the Younger (who was the brother of Artaxerxes II), was executed by scaphism. A third account reports that he died of suffocation, after reading aloud a lengthy monologue from the end of his play Antigone, without pausing to take a breath for punctuation. Another says that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful. According to one legend, he choked to death on an unripe grape. Ī number of "remarkable" legends concerning the death of another of the three great Athenian tragedians, are recorded in the late antique Life of Sophocles. This legend is also alluded to by the Roman poet Horace. no longer mortal", tried to prove he was an immortal god by leaping into Mount Etna, an active volcano. : 104 Īccording to Diogenes Laërtius, the Pre-Socratic philosopher from Sicily, who, in one of his surviving poems, declared himself to have become a " divine being. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed that day "by the fall of a house". Īccording to Valerius Maximus, the eldest of the three great Athenian tragedians, was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. The comedic playwright Aristophanes references Themistocles drinking bull's blood in his comedy The Knights (performed in 424 BC) as the most heroic way for a man to die. The early twentieth-century English classicist Percy Gardner proposed that the story about him drinking bull's blood may have been based on an ignorant misunderstanding of a statue showing Themistocles in a heroic pose, holding a cup as an offering to the gods. The legend is widely retold in classical sources. The Athenian general who won the Battle of Salamis actually died of natural causes in exile, but was widely rumored to have committed suicide by drinking a solution of crushed minerals known as bull's blood. : 104 Īccording to one account given by Diogenes Laërtius, the Greek philosopher was said to have been devoured by dogs after smearing himself with cow manure in an attempt to cure his dropsy. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggests that "the story has an air of mythical adaptation to the poet's habits". The poet, known for works in celebration of wine, choked to death on a grape stone according to Pliny the Elder. This story may have been fabricated by Neanthes of Cyzicus, on whom both Diogenes and Iamblichus rely as a source. Since cutting through the field would violate his own teachings, Pythagoras simply stopped running and was killed. Supposedly, he almost managed to outrun them, but he came to a bean field and refused to run through it, as he had prohibited beans as ritually unclean. Īncient sources disagree on how the Greek philosopher died, but one late and probably apocryphal legend reported by both Diogenes Laërtius, a third-century AD biographer of famous philosophers, and Iamblichus, a Neoplatonist philosopher, states that Pythagoras was murdered by his political enemies. The Greek painter died of laughter while painting an elderly woman. The Olympic champion wrestler's hands reportedly became trapped when he tried to split a tree apart he was then devoured by wolves (or, in later versions, lions). Since the opponent had conceded defeat, Arrhichion was proclaimed the victor posthumously. Held by his unidentified opponent in a stranglehold and unable to free himself, Arrhichion kicked his opponent, causing him so much pain from a foot/ankle injury that the opponent made the sign of defeat to the umpires, but at the same time broke Arrhichion's neck. The Greek pankratiast, caused his own death during the Olympic finals. In order to uphold his own law, he committed suicide. One day, he arrived at the Assembly seeking help to defeat some brigands in the countryside, but with a knife still attached to his belt. Īccording to Diodorus Siculus, the Greek lawgiver from Sicily issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death. The Athenian lawmaker was reportedly smothered to death by gifts of cloaks and hats showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre in Aegina, Greece. The Egyptian pharaoh and unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt was carried off and then killed by a hippopotamus. Many of these stories are likely to be apocryphal.
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