Ancient Greece Archives - Page 23 of 24 - Tales of Times Forgotten

National Museum of Brazil Fire Should Come as a Warning

You may or may not have read about the devastating fire that engulfed the National Museum of Brazil three days ago on September 2, 2018. The museum housed over 20 million objects, including the largest collection of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artifacts in Latin America and one of the largest in the entire western hemisphere. While the extent of the destruction has not yet been fully assessed, it is highly probable that nearly all the artifacts in these collections were destroyed or irreparably damaged by the fire. The entire interior of the building appears to have been reduced to nothing but ash and broken rubble. Worst of all, this destruction was not a freak accident of nature or an inevitable result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; this disaster was entirely preventable. It was entirely the result of sheer human carelessness.

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Misunderstood Ancient Quotes

Modern people are obsessed with ancient quotes. People assume that, if an ancient philosopher said something, it must automatically have some sort of profound meaning or significance. This is part of the reason why there are so many quotations floating around on the internet that have been misattributed to famous people from ancient times. (I have written an article debunking a few of the more popular misattributed ancient quotes, but there are many others that I haven’t covered.)

Unfortunately, even many of the quotes people use today that genuinely come from ancient authors have been greatly misinterpreted or taken out of context. A few of the most popular misinterpreted ancient quotes include “Know yourself,” “Love conquers all,” “I fear the Danaans, even bearing gifts,” and “the face that launched a thousand ships.”

Fascinating Ancient Artifacts

It is true that very little has survived from our classical past, but sometimes the objects that have survived can amaze us. When we see ancient artifacts in museums, we often like to imagine that they might have been touched by someone truly famous, but, with a few rare objects, we know that they were.

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How the Ancients Greeted Each Other

In modern films and television shows, people from the ancient world are commonly shown greeting each other with a rather peculiar handshake in which, instead of merely clasping hands, each person grasps the other’s forearm. Films and television shows tend to most frequently associate this gesture with Roman men, but it has been portrayed in other contexts as well.

Many people will be disappointed to learn that the forearm handshake is not shown in any extant work of ancient art, nor is it ever referred to in any surviving work of ancient literature. We have no evidence that anyone ever used this handshake in antiquity and it appears to be purely a modern invention. This, however, raises a very interesting question: How did ancient people really greet each other?

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The World’s Oldest Surviving Joke Book

We are all familiar with joke books in some form or another, but did you know that the oldest surviving one was written around 1,600 years ago? It is called Philogelos (Φιλόγελως; Philógelōs), which means “The Laughter-Lover” in Ancient Greek. It was probably written in the late fourth or early fifth century AD and contains 265 jokes written in a crude dialect of Ancient Greek.

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Did Pythagoras Discover the Pythagorean Theorem?

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras of Samos (lived c. 570 – c. 495 BC) is most famous today for having allegedly discovered the Pythagorean theorem, but, historically speaking, he did not really discover this theorem and it is even questionable whether he ever engaged in any kind of mathematics at all. The historical Pythagoras of Samos seems to have been a sort of mystic sage and spiritual guru, who lived a far more bizarre and fascinating life than you ever would have guessed from what you learned in mathematics class.

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The Ancient Greeks’ Surprising Views on Weapons Regulation

After the tragic mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, there has been a renewal in discussion over the possibility that Congress might enact some kind of regulation on firearms to (hopefully) reduce the chances of another such shooting taking place. Obviously, the ancient Greeks did not have guns, so they could not have had “gun control” in the modern sense. Nonetheless, some people may find it surprising that the ancient Greeks actually had shockingly strict (some might even say “draconian”) restrictions on citizens bearing arms.

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The Most Depressing Book Ever Written: Death by Starvation by Hegesias of Kyrene

When they hear the words “most depressing book ever written,” most people probably think of a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky or Émile Zola. While works by these writers are well-known for being depressing, just wait until you hear about a book written by the early third-century BC Greek Cyrenaic philosopher Hegesias of Kyrene. The book was called Death by Starvation or The Death-Persuader. According to the Roman orator Cicero (lived 106 – 43 BC), the entire book was essentially an argument for why everyone should just give up on life and kill themselves.

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No, Atlas Did Not Hold the Earth on His Shoulders

The image of the Titan Atlas holding the Earth on his shoulders is an iconic one that has inspired countless writers, thinkers, and artists. It is also a modern notion with no basis whatsoever in any ancient Greek texts. In actual ancient Greek mythology, Atlas does not, in fact, hold the Earth on his shoulders, but rather the sky. The misconception that the ancient Greeks imagined Atlas as holding the Earth on his shoulders arose as a result of the misinterpretation of classical representations of Atlas. In this article, I intend to set the record straight by examining how the ancient Greeks really envisioned Atlas and explaining how the misconception about him holding up the Earth arose.

Cats and Weasels

Everyone knows that, in ancient times, the Egyptians worshipped cats, but across the Mediterranean over in Europe, the situation was much different. During the Archaic Period (lasted c. 800 – c. 510 BC), housecats seem to have been almost completely absent from the Greek world; they do not appear in Greek art and not referenced in works of Greek literature from this time period.

During the Classical Period (lasted c. 510 – c. 323 BC), housecats seem to have been gradually introduced to Greece and southern Italy from Egypt and the Near East, but they seem to have been seen as strange, exotic pets—in the same way that keeping a parrot as a pet might be seen as unusual today.

Eventually, starting during the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC) and continuing into the Roman Period, housecats as pets gradually became more and more common in the Greco-Roman world. Curiously, though, weasels seem to have been much more commonly kept as pets in ancient Greece than cats and the words for “cat” and “weasel” seem to often been conflated.