Ancient freaks
GREEKS WITH SOME CRAZY OLD IDEAS
Having a lava: Barmy Empedocles was a philosopher living in a Greek city on Sicily. In 430BC, he threw himself into the volcano of Mount Etna in a bid to prove that he was immortal. He wasn’t.
Paint potty: The 5th Century BC artist Zeuxis died laughing while looking at his own painting of an old woman. Top thinker Chrysippus is also said to have guffawed himself to death watching a donkey eat figs.
Fatal fruit: Antiphanes died in 334BC after being struck by a hard pear, while fellow playwright Sophocles perished after choking on an unripe grape.
Not So-crates: In a row about gods, philosopher Socrates was ordered to kill himself in 399BC by drinking the poison hemlock. His last words were to remind an aide to pay a debt for a chicken.
Bite nasty: Agathocles, tyrannical Greek ruler of Syracuse, was murdered in 289BC after using a toothpick that had been dipped in poison by his enemies.
Hippo critical: Hippocrates, who died in 370BC, was the founding father of medicine but he diagnosed patients by drinking their urine, tasting their ear wax and shaking them to check their lungs.
Vegging out: Draco, who gave us the modern word draconian, was a 7th Century BC Athens lawmaker who came up with harsh punishments, including death for stealing a cabbage or just being a bit lazy.
Well, stone me: Demosthenes, a politician from the 3rd Century
BC, tried to get over a speech impediment by practising talking with pebbles in his mouth.
What a woke: Philosopher Aristotle used to hold a metal ball while reading by a pan, so if he fell asleep, it would drop and wake him up. He reckoned the brain was only there to cool the blood.
Dire-genes: Eccentric 4th Century philosopher Diogenes lived naked in a wine barrel and threw away his only possession – a wooden bowl – when he saw a boy drinking from a puddle, vowing to do the same.
Heads up: Greek king of Macedon, Alexander the Great, who died in 323BC, ordered helmets that were too big for his soldiers and would leave them around strategically to scare enemies.
Mutt be mad: Athenian general Alcibiades cut the tail of his favourite dog in the 5th Century BC so that people would talk about that, rather than all the other dodgy things he was up to.
Water wonder: Third-century boffin Archimedes, inset, ran around town crying “Eureka!” in the nude after realising that he could work out the volume of an object while in his bath.
Has bean: Maths genius Pythagoras had a phobia of beans, thinking they contained the souls of the dead. He was killed in 495BC by an angry mob after refusing to flee through a field of them.