War in the Hellenistic World

About this book

If we are to believe the healing miracles of Epidauros, inscribed in the Asklepieion around the mid-fourth century BC, a visitor to that most famous Greek sanctuary would not only admire the newly-built temple and the sumptuous dedications, but also see, among the pilgrims seeking healing in that place, men whose bodies and faces had been marked by the wounds inflicted in war (LiDonnici 1995): "Euhippos bore a spear head in his jaw for six years" (A12); "Gorgias of Herakleia . . . was wounded in the lung by an arrow in some battle, and for a year and six months it was festering so badly, that he filled sixty-seven bowls with pus" (B10); "Antikrates of Knidos . . . had been struck with a spear through both his eyes in some battle, and he became blind and carried around the spearhead with him, inside his face" (B12).