Monday, July 25, 2011

Death by Pedantry


While browsing Wikipedia I came across this unusual death that I thought aspiring editors might find interesting, or identify with!

270 BC: Philitas of Cos, Greek intellectual is said by Athenaeus of Naucratis to have studied arguments and erroneous word-usage so intensely that he wasted away and starved to death. Alan Cameron speculates that Philitas died from a wasting disease which his contemporaries joked was caused by his pedantry.