Myth, history and science

in Kos

Maria Botsivali

35th Annual Meeting of the

European Environmental Mutagen Society

Kos, 3 – 7 July 2005

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Thales? – 547 B.C.

Heraclitus~500 B.C.

Pythagoras550 – 480 B.C.

“I will send you to school in Ionia…”Elytis(poet, Nobel laurate,

1911-1996)

Macars´ island (“island of blessed”)

André Thevet (16th cent.): “Kos with its gardens and the fine fragrance of its flowers is heaven on earth”

Eustathios (12th cent.): “The food that one cannot find in Kos, cannot find even in Egypt”

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Short history of Kos

Prehistoric to classical era

Inhabited since 2900 B.C.

Mycenaean era (1600-1150 B.C.)

Participation in Trojan war with thirty ships

Hellenistic period – its brightest period

Roman period

Byzantine period

Occupied by the order of Ioannite Knights (Knights of St. John) (1314-1523)

Turkish domination (1523-1912)

Italian domination (1912-1943)

…Nowadays famous for its bicycles…

Asclepios

Hippocrates18th descendant of

Asclepios

Apollon

Coronis

Epione(“mild cure”)

Hygeia (“health”)Iaso (“cure”)

Aegle (“radiant”)Panacea (“heal-

all”)Acesso

(“healing”)

MachaonPodaleirios

Chiron (Centaur, plant

healer, surgeon)God of medicine

Kos

Asclepiade physicians

Troy

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Machaon (“machaera

”lance / knife)

surgeon

Podaleirios(“poda”=foot, “leirion”=lily; “the one walking among the

lilies”)physician

Pancratium maritimum, sea lilly from Kos coast

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AsclepiosHis emblem is the caduceus: a staff (tree of life) with a snake (wisdom and earth) coiled round it –not poisonous, but curing.

Punished by Zeus who changed him into the constellation of the Ophiuchos (“snake holder”)

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Hippocrates (Kos, 460 – 357 B.C.)

Books: DIET (nutrition, all foods, all herbs) AIRS, WATERS and PLACES (environment)

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“Each disease has its nature and cause”

“The changes of nature are extremely important”

“Nature is the healer of disease”

“All fresh foods are more dynamic because are nearer to life”

Scientific scepticism…

“This, or something very like this, is the truth.”

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Other famous men of ancient Kos

Epicharmos (540-450 B.C.): dramatist, the first comic writer, philosopher

Plato used to sleep with his words under his pillow

“The mind sees and the mind hears, the rest are blind and deaf”

Philetas (330- 285 B.C.): Poet and scholar, founder of the Alexandrian school of Literature and Poetry. Tutor of Ptolemy II the Philadelphos, who was also born in Kos.

He died because he could not solve the sophists’ riddle known as the Liar

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Theocritus (310-245 B.C.): Bucolic poet, born in Syracuse of a Koan father, lived some years in Kos. He wrote the Idylls

Herondas(3rd century BC): Poet, inventor of mime iambic poetry. His IV mime describes a scene of two women sacrificing a rooster in the Asclepeion of Kos and admiring the paintings of Apelles (Antigonos and Aphrodite Anadyomeni – rising from the sea)

Aphrodite Anadyomeni in Pompei

Apelles (352-308 B.C.): Greatest painter of ancient Greece. Painter of Alexander the Great

Boticcelli, inspired by the descriptions of Apelles‘ Aphrodite, created his own Aphrodite emerging from the water

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“Life is short, art is long, occasion sudden and dangerous, experience deceitful, judgment difficult”

“Ars longa, vita brevis”

(Hippocrates)

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“Eat progress with its peel and with its seeds”

(Elytis)

Kosmos (“κόσμος” – ornament)

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Kos

Knowledge Of Self, Magnificence Of Science