Friedrich Nietzsche died in Weimar on 25 August 1900, after a long and arduous mental illness. For almost twelve years, the once dashing professor and restless thinker had been reduced to a passive, mindless, and almost invisible existence, first behind the walls of mental wards, then in the house of his mother, and during the last three years of his life in a private villa at Weimar under the care of his sister. Physically robust but progressively demented, he was a stranger to himself and to others, largely oblivious to his own identity as well as to his past. His once so powerful mind had been put on hold, as it were, unable to think straight, to recollect, or even to read. Tragically, he did remember that he had written “nice books” and “many nice things.” Even in his darkest hours he continued to be deeply affected by music. During his last years, he slept much of the time and lived in unmitigated apathy. Apart from a small circle of family members and friends, he had next to no visitors and rarely recognized anybody. His connection with his environment was tenuous, amounting to a vague sense of familiarity at best. He was but a shadow of his former self when he died. Still, his death was widely noticed and reported. Who was Nietzsche at the time of his death, and how was he remembered by the rest of the world?

In both literature and art, Greek gods are engaged in a wide range of activities that run the gamut from the domestic and all-too-human to the sublime and often reflect dominant aspects of their character or realm. They eat and drink, have sex and give birth, walk or fly, take a ride or sail aboard a ship, sing and dance, attend weddings and symposia, bear arms or play musical instruments, wage war or hunt animals, perform sacrifice and pour libations, kill or heal, and curse or bless. The one thing they do not do is read and write. To be sure, we know of some exceptions, but they are so few that they prove the general rule: Olympian gods do not appear to be literate, or if they are, they do not flaunt their literacy. In fact, they hide it.

The principal exceptions are the Muses and Athena. On a number of fifth-century vases, one or two Muses are shown holding the ancient equivalent of a book, either a papyrus roll or a writing tablet. Apollo is present in many of these scenes, but he is represented with a lyre, not a stylus. The lyre signals that he is musical rather than literate. In the prologue of Callimachus' Aitia, Apollo gives advice to the young poet who composes with his writing tablet (deltos) on his knees. The patron god of poetry inspires the poet to write, but he does not write himself.