 This change in meaning was influenced by the military conflicts that the Greek city-states were then engaged in against the Persian Empire.In this context, the term makes appearances in such surviving text as Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", Hippocrates' "De morbo sacro", and Gorgias' "Encomium of Helen".In Sophocles' play, for example, the character Oedipus derogatorily refers to the seer Tiresius as a "magos"—in this context meaning something akin to 'quack' or 'charlatan'—reflecting how this epithet was no longer reserved only for Persians.