ABSTRACT
The ‘prosthetic imagination’, which posits a symbiotic relation between body and prosthesis, has been criticised by theorists of disabilities as an idealised metaphor that masks the fact that prostheses can create rather than supply alienation and deficiency. This chapter nevertheless defends the relevance of this metaphor to ancient Greek literature. Going back to the first extant mention of prosthesis (Pindar, Olympian 1) and to what can be considered its counterparts in Greek tragedy, I show that they are striking reworkings of weapons represented as animated body-incorporations in Homer. I then propose to reassess the prosthetic metaphor in light of its meaning in Greek literature: a response to an irrepressible need to imagine sympathetic relationships between humans and the things they live with.
