Like many people, I am deeply fascinated by the obscure, the bizarre, and the perplexing. Thankfully, I happen to study the classics, which is a subject that is full of obscure, bizarre, and perplexing stories. There are so many such stories, in fact, that I cannot even count the number of them that I have read. Nonetheless, I thought I would share a few of my favorites here. Here are three stories I picked out as being among the most bizarre stories told by classical writers: a story of a dying man who allegedly stayed alive for three days by sniffing a loaf of bread, stories of a man with a golden thigh who could make rivers greet him by name, and a historical event in which an oligarchy was overthrown by conspirators disguised as prostitutes.
#1. That time a dying man was supposedly kept alive for three days by sniffing a loaf of bread
According to the third-century AD Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtios in his book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, when the philosopher Demokritos (lived c. 460–c. 370 BC), the main pre-Socratic proponent of the philosophical concept of Atomism, was on his deathbed at the age of one hundred and nine, he was cared for by his sister. His sister, however, was worried that he might die during the Thesmophoria festival, an important religious festival attended solely by women.
Supposedly, Demokritos told her to go to the festival, promising that he would survive until the festival was over if she would place a loaf of fresh bread under his nostrils. Demokritos’s sister did exactly as he instructed and went to the festival. Miraculously, Demokritos survived the three days of the festival solely by sniffing the loaf of bread. Then, once the festival was over, he died peacefully in his sister’s company and was given a proper funeral. Needless to say, although Demokritos himself was definitely a real person, this story about his death is almost certainly apocryphal.
ABOVE: Fictional portrait of Democritus, painted 1628 by the Dutch painter Hentrick der Brugghen
#2. All those bizarre legends about Pythagoras
While most people today think of Pythagoras (lived 570 – c. 495 BC) as a mathematician because of the theorem named after him, it is actually unclear whether the historical Pythagoras himself ever made any contributions to the field of mathematics whatsoever. In fact, historians do not know if Pythagoras himself even studied mathematics, let alone made any contributions towards its advancement. To be sure, mathematics were definitely important to many of Pythagoras’s later followers, but there is no solid evidence that he himself had any interest in it.
There is, unfortunately, very little that scholars actually know about Pythagoras’s historical life. We know that he was definitely born on the island of Samos sometime in the late first half of the sixth century BC and that his father was a man named Mnesarchos. We know that, in around 530 BC, he left Samos and resettled in Kroton in southern Italy, where he established the school of Pythagoreanism. We also know that he taught the doctrine of metempsychosis (that is, reincarnation) and that he probably died sometime around 495 BC or thereabouts.
There are a number of other things we can say Pythagoras probably did, but the things I just mentioned are pretty much all the things we know about him for certain. We know next to nothing about what he was like as a person. Pythagoras was certainly a real person, as references to him and his teachings by his contemporaries prove without a doubt, but there are all sorts of bizarre and elaborate legends about him recorded in later sources.
According to the satirical poet Xenophanes of Kolophon (lived c. 570 – c. 475 BC), when Pythagoras encountered a man beating his dog, he told him to stop, because the dog had been his friend in a past life and he recognized him by the sound of his bark. According to a fragment from Aristotle (lived 384–322 BC), Pythagoras had a golden thigh, which he exhibited publicly at the Olympic Games. Aristotle also tells us that when Pythagoras was bitten by a venomous snake, he bit it back and it died. Other, later sources tell us that he was once seen in two places at once. When he crossed the River Casas, the waters parted for him and the river greeted him by name.
He was given a magic arrow by the priest of Apollo that allowed him to fly. He once persuaded a bull not to eat beans. On another occasion, he persuaded a rampaging bear to swear an oath that it would never harm any living thing ever again. If the legends are to be believed, Pythagoras performed more miracles than Jesus, every one of them more bizarre and perplexing than the last.
I have written about Pythagoras on this website before, but I am writing about him again just because I find him and the legends associated with him so fascinating and I thought I would share some of them with some of the newer people coming to my site who have not seen my earlier posts.
ABOVE: Bust of Pythagoras from the Capitoline Museums, Rome, showing him as he was imagined by later Greeks. (No one knows what the historical Pythagoras really looked like.)
#3. That time a group of conspirators disguised themselves as prostitutes at a banquet to overthrow an oligarchic junta
I have just one more bizarre story to share in this article. This one is more probably historical than any of the others I have told, but equally as strange and amusing. According to the Hellenika by the Greek historian Xenophon (lived c. 430 – 354 BC), in the winter of 379 BC, there was a conspiracy in the city-state of Thebes to overthrow a pro-Spartan oligarchic junta and restore democracy.
The conspirators were a group of seven exiles led by a man named Pelopidas. They snuck into Theban territory in cold, windy weather under the cover of night, dressed as peasants with their faces muffled (under the pretense of protecting them from the cold). The Spartan-installed polemarchoi (literally “war-leaders”) Archias and Philippos were holding a symposion, or banquet. The banquet was organized by their secretary, a man named Phyllidas, who was in on the plot. Once they were in the city, the conspirators disguised themselves as hetairai (high-class prostitutes). They dressed in full drag with veils to cover their faces, but they kept knives hidden under their dresses.
After the banqueters were thoroughly intoxicated, they began calling for Phyllidas to bring in women to entertain them. Phyllidas accordingly led in three of the more feminine-looking conspirators, along with several other conspirators, who were posing as maids. Once the conspirators laid down on the couches beside the oligarchs, they drew their knives, which you will remember they had hidden under their clothes, and assassinated the men they were lying with. Thus, the Spartan oligarchy was overthrown.
ABOVE: Attic red-figure kylix painting, dated to around 490 BC or thereabouts, depicting a hetaira lying beside a man at a symposion.
