ἄλγος Ancient Greek · revision 2220

− It is found from Homer on, mostly in epic and poetry.^(Beekes 2010)^(Frisk 1960) In Homer it is mostly plural, “woes, hardships”: the wrath of Achilles “laid countless woes on the Achaeans”, and Odysseus suffered many griefs at sea.^(Cunliffe 1924)^(LSJ 1940)^(DGE) Once in the ''Iliad'' it is clearly bodily pain, that of a wounded god.^(Cunliffe 1924)

− In Archaic and Classical poetry it is pain of body and, more often, of mind.^(LSJ 1940)^(CGL 2021) Hesiod personifies the Pains as children of Strife;^(DGE)^(CGL 2021) Solon warns that “from a little ache comes great pain”.^(DGE) Sophocles uses it of Philoctetes' festering wound, and the tragedians often of grief.^(LSJ 1940)^(CGL 2021) In prose it appears in medical writers and Xenophon for pain in a part of the body, such as the heart or the feet, and on an inscription from Epidaurus for a headache.^(LSJ 1940)^(DGE)