Dr. Debby Sneed

To be sure, we could talk about "were these disabilities in the ancient period?" and about how to classify an ancient person as disabled/nondisabled, but that's not usually what's at stake when people say we don't have any literature by a disabled person, so here goes.

First: Pliny the Elder had a chronic respiratory illness, probably asthma. I don't know if he wrote about it himself, but it probably contributed to his death(?).

Seneca the Younger also had asthma and he specifically writes about it in Letter 54. Someone with a disability, writing about his experience of his disability. He says physicians describe it as "practicing how to die."

Aelius Aristides had a chronic illness (if you believe him, not everyone does) and he chronicled his experiences as a chronically ill person in search of a "cure".

Some we can speculate about, like Thucydides: he describes how those who had the plague but survived lost fingers and toes and sometimes their eyes. Thucydides had the plague but survived. So...physical consequences?

This is just what I can think of right now, as I'm procrastinating a bit. I'll add more as they come to me, I think this will be a handy list, so feel free to contribute!

I also want to emphasize: I am one of the people who've previously said we don't have literature from disabled people! I'm only recently coming into this realization that actually we do, so this isn't a subtweet of anyone, just something to contribute to all of our lives.

Another speculation: Sophocles died very old, maybe age 90 at death. His last play, written very shortly before his own death, was about a disabled old man about to die. Coincidence?

The poet Hipponax may've had a mobility impairment. Herodas says Hipponax used choliambic meter, or a meter characterized by "limping iambs," which he supposedly invented. So, a disabled person representing his disability in poetry? Go to @edithmayhall's article for this!

It is really interesting to me that so many of these examples are Roman! There’s a huge difference in how Greeks and Romans conceptualize disability (as a concept) and situate disabled people, maybe that’s also bearing out in terms of (self-)identification of disabilities.