num_pages: 224
description: The great plague of Athens that began in 430 BCE had an enormous effect on the imagination of its literary artists &amp; on the social imagination of the city as a whole. In this 2007 book Prof. Mitchell-Boyask studies the impact of the plague on Athenian tragedy early in the 420s &amp; argues for a significant relationship between drama &amp; the development of the cult of the healing god Asclepius in the next decade during a period of war &amp; increasing civic strife. The Athenian decision to locate their temple for Asclepius adjacent to the Theater of Dionysus arose from deeper associations between drama healing &amp; the polis that were engaged actively by the crisis of the plague. The book also considers the representation of the plague in Thucydides' History as well as the metaphors generated by that representation which recur later in the same work.
language: English
title: Plague and the Athenian Imagination: Drama, History, and the Cult of Asclepius
publisher: Cambridge University Press