“... in the fifth century BC provided the plot for no fewer than three lost tragedies, one each from Aeschylus, Sophocles (The Mantises) and Euripides (Polyidus). When King Minos lost his son Glaukos, he held a competition to discover who could best describe a strange cow of many colours, white, red and black. ‘It’s like a mulberry,’ suggested ...”

“... intimate conflicts were rehearsed in a publication cofounded by Freud himself, with a motto from Aeschylus, untranslated, about the value of suffering, and in the ‘Genius, Psychopathology and Creativity’ issue. Pierpont paints a rather harrowing picture of the effects on Roth: ‘There he was, psychically naked, in his psychiatrist’s baleful ...”