Ancient Rome Archives - Page 9 of 17 - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, Ancient Greek Slaves Did Not Like Being Enslaved

It seems like it should be obvious that slaves in ancient Greece did not like being enslaved. Unfortunately, things that seem like they should be obvious are often things that many people don’t find obvious at all. There is a disturbingly widespread claim that slaves in ancient Greece were happy to be enslaved and that they preferred slavery over freedom.

This claim recently received attention among classicists due to a description for a lecture by an esteemed classics professor for The Great Courses Daily, which begins with the shocking assertion “Slavery was the ideal condition for some people in ancient Greece.”

The claim has been around for a very long time, however. It has been widely disseminated through books and other media and, despite the valiant efforts of some classicists to point out that ancient slavery was cruel and unjust, many people continue to regard it as benign or at worst a necessary evil.

What Does ‘Habeas Corpus’ Literally Mean in Latin?

The Latin phrase Habeas corpus is used to refer to a legal writ dictating that a person who has been detained or imprisoned must be brought before a court to determine whether or not they have been detained lawfully. The writ is intended to prevent individuals from being indefinitely imprisoned without trial. If you ask a lawyer, most of them will tell you that Habeas corpus means “Produce the body.” This is not an inaccurate translation, but it is not the most literal translation either.

In addition to the standard translation, you can find all sorts of other claims about what the phrase supposedly literally means on the internet. Unfortunately, these claims nearly always come from people who don’t know Latin and who have managed to severely bungle their “literal” translations.

Did Medieval Christians Really Crucify Heretics?

There seems to be a very popular misconception that, in Europe during the Middle Ages, fanatical Christians went around crucifying anyone they suspected of heresy. This trope of medieval Christian crucifixions seems to be especially common in television shows with anti-religious agendas, where the writers are eager to portray medieval Christians in the worst possible light.

It’s easy to see how this misconception might have arisen. After all, medieval Christians did talk a lot about crucifixion because of the crucifixion of Jesus and they do have a well-earned reputation for dealing harshly with those accused of heresy. In historical reality, though, crucifixion was never used as a form of punishment by Christians in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Was Caligula Really Insane?

The Roman emperor Caligula, who ruled from 16 March 37 AD until his assassination on 24 January 41 AD, is undoubtedly one of the most notorious Roman emperors. Unfortunately, over the centuries, a tremendous mythology has grown up around him and many of the things that are popularly believed about him are simply not true.

Caligula is best known to the general public as an insane, sexually depraved emperor who thought he was a living god, murdered a little boy for coughing too much, had sex with all three of his sisters, murdered his sister who was pregnant with his child and ate the fetus, turned his palace into a brothel, drank expensive pearls dissolved in vinegar, made his horse a senator, and waged war against Neptune to collect seashells as “loot.”

These are all stories that have accumulated over the years. Most of them are definitely or probably false; others are based on historical facts but have been greatly misrepresented. Caligula was many things—including a jerk, a narcissist, a sadist, and a tyrant—but he probably wasn’t really insane.

Sean Hannity Still Doesn’t Know Latin—But Does He Read My Blog?

Those who have been reading my articles for a while may recall that I published an article on 16 May 2020 titled “Sean Hannity Does Not Know Latin” in which I extensively made fun of Sean Hannity’s book Live Free Or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink, for the fact that the pre-released cover image had the thoroughly garbled and unintelligible Latin motto “Vivamus vel libero perit Americae” emblazoned across the bottom.

In my article, I noted that it was evident that whoever came up with that motto had simply typed the phrase “Live free or America dies” into Google Translate and slapped the garbled nonsense that spewed out straight onto the front cover of the book. (Apparently no one told them that Google Translate is absolutely terrible when it comes to dead languages.)

Now, as it happens, the very book whose Latin motto I criticized is set to be released in two days. Curiously, the unintelligible Latin word salad has vanished from the front cover and been replaced with the grammatically correct motto “Vivamus liberi ne America pereat,” which neatly translates into English to mean, “Let us live free so that America will not die.” This makes me wonder: Did someone at Threshold Editions read my blog post and realize they needed to fix the bad Latin?

Things That Did Not Cause the Fall of the Roman Empire

People have a lot of theories about what caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. In particular, many American conservatives seem to really love talking about the parallels that supposedly exist between the current situation in the United States and the fall of the Roman Empire. Usually, they try to argue that we need to reject liberal ideas and return to good old-fashioned traditional values and that, if we do this, we will be able to save our empire from its impending doom.

Unfortunately, the people who make these comparisons generally know nothing at all about what really caused the fall of the Roman Empire. They basically just impute things they don’t like about our current situation and claim that these things are what led to the Roman Empire’s downfall. (They also invariably seem to forget that only the western portion of the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century AD; the eastern portion managed to survive for a thousand years after that until the conquest of the city of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.)

Today, I’m going to talk about some things that definitely were not significant factors in the decline of the western Roman Empire, but that people—especially American conservatives—like to pretend were.

Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” Debunked

In our society we revere scientists far more than we revere historians. Consequently, people are often more willing to listen to what scientists say about history than what historians say about history. Unfortunately, often times, when scientists try to speak or write about history, they make glaring mistakes.

For instance, I have already written extensively about how the 1980 television miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, written and presented by the astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, promoted all sorts of egregious misconceptions about the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia and about the supposed destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

The book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, written by the linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker is one that has been bothering me for a long time. I promised that I would write an article about it in this article I wrote last year about violence in the pre-modern world, but I have been holding back until now because I am aware of how popular the book is and what an impact it has had on so many people’s lives.

Bill Gates, for instance, described it in a review as “one of the most important books I’ve read – not just this year, but ever.” Unfortunately, this book is filled with all kinds of historical inaccuracies and I think it promotes some ideas that, while they may seem comforting in the short-term, are actually deleterious in the long-run.

No, the Christian Cross Is Not Based on the Egyptian Ankh

The ankh is a hieroglyphic symbol composed of a T-shape with a loop on top that was used in ancient Egypt to represent the consonant sequence Ꜥ-n-ḫ. The Egyptian word for “life” was composed of this exact sequence of consonants. As a result of this, the ankh became widely used as a symbol for life. People would often wear the symbol on amulets for protection and it was used to decorate shrines, temples, and tombs.

In recent years, a claim has arisen that the Christian cross is, in fact, plagiarized off the Egyptian ankh. Despite its popularity, this claim is almost entirely false, for reasons that I shall explain shortly. Nonetheless, there is a very interesting kernel of truth behind this claim that many of its proponents are not even aware of.

Who Was Agnodice Really?

The ancient Greek legend of Agnodice is one that has captivated modern audiences. Agnodice is said to have been the first female doctor, who disguised herself as a man because it was forbidden for women to practice medicine. In this article, we will examine the full story of Agnodice, the ancient sources behind it, and the question of whether or not she really existed.

Were Mythical Creatures Inspired by Fossils?

It is popularly believed that stories about dragons and other mythical creatures must have arisen when ancient peoples discovered fossils of prehistoric animals, especially dinosaurs. As we shall see in a moment, there is definitely some evidence that ancient peoples did sometimes discover fossils of prehistoric creatures and interpret them as the remains of mythic beasts.

Fossils, however, seem to have only rarely been the source of belief in such mythic creatures to begin with; it seems to have been far more common for people to interpret fossils in light of mythic creatures they already believed in, rather than inventing entirely new mythic beasts to explain the fossils.

Furthermore, the vast majority of claims about specific mythical creatures being inspired by specific prehistoric creatures don’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny. There is almost no solid evidence to support the assumption that dragons, Cyclopes, or griffins were inspired by prehistoric fossils and there is actually quite substantial evidence against these assumptions.