Most people go to another world quite prosaically - from illness or old age, a few - tragically. But not everyone is able to adequately live to old age and meet death with dignity. Some famous people who lived in ancient times were able to surprise the world with their ridiculous death.
Homer
According to legend, the ancient Greek poet Homer ended up on the island of Ios in his old age. Once, while walking along the seashore, he met local children and asked what they had caught. In response, they asked him a riddle: "We have what we did not find, and what we found, we threw away."
Apotheosis of Homer / Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1827.
The poet could not find the answer. A few days later, he died of grief, lamenting that his former sharpness of mind had left him.
In fact, the children meant that they did not catch fish at all, but lice: they threw out the discovered insects, and the uncaught lice remained with them. So the children-fishermen turned out to be wiser than Homer, who in his poems portrayed them as stupid.
Calliope's Lament for Homer / David Louis, 1812.
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Interestingly, in the ancient tradition poets and fishermen (or fish sellers) often competed - this is reflected in one fragment of Xenarch's comedy: “Poets are all nonsense. They have never discovered anything new, each of them only twirls the same thing here and there. But there is no more philosophical tribe than fish sellers …"
Aeschylus
The great tragedian Aeschylus died from the fact that an eagle flying by dropped a turtle on his head. The bird was attracted by the playwright's brilliant bald head, which she confused with a stone and decided to break the turtle's shell against it, throwing the turtle from a height.
This tragic death happened in Sicily, where Aeschylus left at the end of his life, as he did not get along with the Athenians. On that day, he went out into the open air, as the oracle predicted his death from the collapse of the house.
The behavior of eagles to throw a turtle from a height on a stone so that its shell would split and it would be possible to get meat was described by Pliny the Elder in his book about birds (Natural History, Book 10), citing the episode with Aeschylus as an example.
Death of Aeschylus / Jean-Jacques Boissard, 1596.
A similar death was described by Aeschylus himself in the play "Psychogues", predicting her Odyssey through the mouth of the prophet Tiresias: “The heron, flying over your head, will empty your stomach and hit you with feces. Your aged and bald head will become inflamed from a thorn that the heron caught in the sea and ate."
Kalhant
Priest and soothsayer from Mycenae Calhant is one of the heroes of Homer's Iliad. It was Calhant who, before sailing to Troy, advised the leader of the Greek army, Agamemnon, to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis.
The Sacrifice of Iphigenia / Nicolas Beatrizet.
Even in his youth, Kalhant was predicted that he would die if he met a more powerful soothsayer than himself. This soothsayer turned out to be the Pug, who met Calhant near the Colophon.
Wanting to confuse the Pug, Kalhant asked him how many figs were growing on the wild fig tree they were standing by. The pug answered: "Ten thousand and one more fig." When the fruits were harvested, it turned out that the Pug was not mistaken.
Calhant (right) sacrifices to Iphigenia / Pompeian fresco.
He, in turn, asked Kalhant how many piglets were in the womb of a pregnant pig wandering past and when she would bear the offspring. Hoping that he would be able to leave before it would be possible to verify his words, Kalhant said the first thing that came to his mind: "Eight pigs, and the offspring will be in nine days."
“I think there will be nine pigs, and they will be born tomorrow at noon,” objected the Pug, and again he was right. Kalhant died, unable to bear such grief, and was buried at Cape Notia.
Chrysippus
One of the founders of Stoicism, the ancient Greek philosopher Chrysippus, died either from undiluted wine, or from laughter at his own joke about undiluted wine.
Both versions are quoted by Diogenes Laertius in the Biographies of Famous Philosophers:
When he was teaching at the Odeon, one of the students called him to the sacrificial feast. Here he drank undiluted wine, felt dizzy, and on the fifth day lost his life, seventy-three years old, in the 143rd Olympiad. Our comic poems about him are as follows:
Sipping wine until dizzy
Chrysippus without any pity
I parted with my soul, with my homeland and with the Portico, To become a tenant Aidov.
However, some say that he died of a fit of laughter: when he saw the donkey gobble up his figs, he shouted to the old woman that now it was necessary to give the donkey clean wine to rinse its throat, burst into laughter and gave up his ghost.
Filit Kosky
The Greek poet, philologist and grammarist Philetus lived at the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria and was engaged in the formation of the royal heir. He spent the last years on his native island of Kos in the company of the poets Aratus, Theocritus and Hermesianactus.
According to the stories of contemporaries, Philetus was so thin that he had to tie lead weights to his shoes so that he would not be blown away by a strong wind. Perhaps the extremely asthenic complexion influenced his sudden departure from life.
In the book "The Feast of the Wise Men," the ancient Greek writer Athenaeus quotes a legend according to which Philetus once got carried away with the study of lies - "deceitful speeches." withered from insomnia and anxiety because He so diligently investigated the "paradox of the liar" - the ambiguity of the statement "I am lying", which the liar utters, that he stopped eating and died of exhaustion.
In The Feast of the Wise Men, one interlocutor warns the other:
All you, Ulpian, as usual, will not take any dish until you are convinced that its name was known in antiquity. Because of these worries, you run the risk of withering away someday, just as Filit Koski has waned away, studying the so-called "deceitful speeches".
As the inscription on his grave testifies, he died of exhaustion over his research: “Traveler, I am Philiot. I was ruined by "deceitful speeches", also over the secrets of the words of the thought, sometimes at night.
Used materials from the site: storyfiles.blogspot.ru