Aristotle Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

At What Age Did Ancient Greek Women Typically Marry?

It is well and widely known that ancient Greek parents typically compelled their daughters to marry at a shockingly young age, one at which they would legally be considered minors in most countries in the twenty-first century. Greek men, by contrast, typically married much older, usually when they were in their late twenties or thirties. As a result, the groom at an ancient Greek wedding was usually at least a decade older than the bride he was marrying—and in many cases much older than that.

Unmarried girls were effectively considered their father’s property. Marriages were usually arranged primarily between a girl’s father and her male suitor. The extent to which a father allowed his daughter to decide which man she would marry probably varied significantly depending on factors such as time period, region, and the specific father in question’s personality and attitudes; in some cases, girls probably had significant say over which man they married, but it is likely that, in other cases, they had little or no say.

Exactly how young did ancient Greek women really marry, though? Popular histories and even many academics routinely assert as fact that Greek parents typically forced their daughters to marry as soon as they began puberty, before they even turned fifteen. In this post, however, I will argue that this is based mainly on one literary passage describing a bride who was probably unusually young and was not typical for most city-states. Instead, a more comprehensive view of the evidence suggests that Greek girls actually most commonly married when they were a bit older, broadly between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. The ages at which girls married also varied significantly across regions; ancient authors record that, in certain parts of the Greek world, girls typically married significantly younger or older than they did in other parts.

What Was the “Epic Cycle” Really?

If you’re at all familiar with early ancient Greek literature, there’s a very strong likelihood that you’ve heard at some point that some ancient authors considered the Iliad and the Odyssey to belong to something called the “Epic Cycle.” This term refers to a particular group of eight epic poems in dactylic hexameter verse that originated from oral tradition during the Greek Archaic Period (lasted c. 800 – c. 490 BCE) and that all tell stories about the Trojan War and the mortal heroes who are said to have fought in it.

The poems that are included in the Epic Cycle are, in narrative order of the events they describe: the Kypria, the Iliad, the Aithiopis, the Little Iliad, the Iliou Persis or Sack of Ilion, the Nostoi or Homecomings, the Odyssey, and the Telegoneia. Sadly, of these poems, only the Iliad and the Odyssey have survived to the present day complete. Only a few tiny fragments of the other epics, preserved through quotation by later authors, and prose summaries of their contents remain.

Unfortunately, very few explanations of the Epic Cycle for a general audience exist and the vast majority of the ones that do exist are misleading and written by non-classicists. As a result, most people who are not classics specialists aren’t aware that it existed and most of those who are aware have some serious misunderstandings about what it was. That is why, in this post, I am going to discuss what the Epic Cycle was and—just as importantly—what it wasn’t. For the purposes of this post, I will assume that my readers have some basic knowledge about Greek myths of the Trojan War and at least a vague awareness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but I will not assume that they have any familiarity with Greek literature, philology, or history beyond this.

The Ancient Greeks Ate Cicadas and Grasshoppers!

Twenty-first-century westerners frequently like to imagine that the ancient Greeks and Romans were “just like us.” The truth, however, is that, if a person from twenty-first-century Europe, the U.S., or Canada were transported back in time to classical Athens in the fifth century BCE, they would find themself in a culture drastically different from their own in more ways than most people today appreciate.

Notably, although ancient Greek cuisine bore some similarities to modern Greek cuisine and southern European cuisine more generally, it also bore some striking differences. For instance, many twenty-first-century westerners will be surprised to learn that the ancient Greeks frequently ate insects—specifically cicadas and grasshoppers, which they apparently regarded as a delicious snack.

How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?

The United States Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision in the landmark abortion case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health at some point before the end of the present term, which will most likely end sometime in June or early July of this year. An initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that has been obtained by Politico indicates that the majority of the justices have already privately decided to completely overturn the previous Supreme Court rulings in the cases of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which held that the U.S. Constitution protects the inherent right of a pregnant person to choose to have an abortion until the point when the fetus becomes viable outside the womb, which is generally agreed to occur at around twenty-three or twenty-four weeks gestational age.

In this new case, the court is expected to rule that the U.S. Constitution does not protect any right of a pregnant person to choose to have an abortion at any point during pregnancy. Although the verdict is not final and the justices still have time to change their minds, it is unlikely at this point that they will do so. This will be the first (although possibly not the last) time in living memory that the Supreme Court has completely revoked something that it previously deemed a major fundamental right.

Given the current situation, I thought it would be useful to write a post about attitudes toward abortion in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world. This post will cover attitudes among peoples of the ancient Near East, Greeks, Romans, and early Christians and will give some insight about how and why ancient Christians came to disapprove of abortion in the first place.

Were Ancient Civilizations Conservative or Liberal?

I have repeatedly encountered questions on Quora asking whether ancient civilizations were “liberal” or “conservative,” so I thought I would write an in-depth response to those sorts of questions here. I think these questions arise from people perceiving what seems like a fundamental paradox: we revere ancient civilizations for things people generally see as progressive, such as technological advancements and the invention of democracy, while, at the same time, it is widely known that basically all ancient societies had slavery, oppressed women to some degree or another, and were often imperialistic, xenophobic, and culturally chauvinistic.

It’s true that ancient civilizations were generally very conservative in the sense that they tended to value traditions very highly, they were usually culturally resistant to change, and people in those civilizations rarely challenged long-established cultural assumptions and social institutions. For instance, as far as we have evidence, few people in the ancient world ever challenged the idea that men are naturally superior to women or the idea that slavery is normal and morally acceptable.

At the same time, though, it would be misleading to describe ancient civilizations as “conservative” or “liberal” without careful clarification because, among individual people in the ancient world, there was tremendous ideological diversity. Furthermore, the normative values of ancient civilizations were often very different from the values of both contemporary people who call themselves conservatives and contemporary people who call themselves liberals.

Why Did the Patriarchal Greeks and Romans Worship Such Powerful Goddesses?

It is widely known that the ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped many powerful goddesses, whom they held in extremely high regard. At the same time, it is also widely known that ancient Greek and Roman societies were deeply patriarchal. Misogyny and machismo were rampant among men of all social classes. Women’s lives were, in general, strictly socially controlled and women were excluded from holding most official positions of power.

As a result of this, one of the most common questions people have asked me about classical mythology is how the Greeks and Romans were able to accommodate such powerful goddesses within their respective pantheons while simultaneously denigrating human women. In this essay, I will try to answer this question to the best of my ability. I will give several different plausible explanations in the hope that some of them, or the combination of all of them, may be satisfactory.

Aristotle Was Not Wrong about Everything

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BCE) is widely portrayed in popular culture as an overconfident buffoon who made assertions based on no evidence whatsoever and who was wrong about nearly everything. It is often claimed that his errors and overconfidence held back the progress of science for two thousand years. This portrayal is wildly inaccurate and is rooted in a centuries-old tradition of hostile writers deliberately misrepresenting Aristotle’s works to make him look as stupid as possible.

It is undoubtedly true that Aristotle made quite a few mistakes, but he was wrong a lot less often than is usually claimed. Furthermore, Aristotle did, in fact, rely on empirical evidence. In fact, of all ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle is by far one of the most empirical. When Aristotle did make a mistake, it was generally not because he didn’t care about evidence, but rather because the evidence available to him was incomplete or his interpretation of the evidence was faulty.

Finally, the claim that Aristotle held back the progress of science for two thousand years is demonstrably wrong and ridiculous. For one thing, for much of the two thousand years in question, Aristotle wasn’t even generally seen as the most authoritative philosopher in the parts of the world where his works were being regularly studied. Furthermore, even when Aristotle was seen as the most authoritative philosopher, his authority was still open to some degree of question.

Should We Be Tearing Down Statues of Socrates and Aristotle Because of Their Views on Slavery?

You may have heard that there are bunch of statues that have been taken down recently. I think that’s a good thing. Some other people disagree. On 12 June 2020, the British comedian John Cleese—who is known as a member of the comedy group Monty Python and as the co-writer and lead actor for the sitcom Fawlty Towers—issued this tweet:

Cleese followed this up with another tweet in which he said this:

There is a lot to unpack here. Cleese is obviously joking, but, through his misunderstanding of what protesters want and why, he has inadvertently raised some very serious questions that I think are worth addressing.

No, Aristotle Is Not Telling You to Unleash Your Inner Rage

Most people today believe that the word catharsis refers to the necessary release of negative emotions and destructive impulses for the sake of “purging” oneself of those emotions and impulses. Many people see this “purging” of negative emotions—usually specifically anger—as healthy or even necessary. This idea of catharsis as emotional purging is usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BC).

Psychological experiments, however, have shown that unleashing your anger does not cause that anger to go away. In fact, actually has a tendency to make people even more angry than they were originally. Furthermore, while Aristotle did use the Greek word κάθαρσις (kátharsis) in his Poetics, he certainly didn’t use that word to mean what many people today think he meant by it.

What Do Conservatives Really Mean When They Talk about “Western Civilization”?

The concept of “western civilization” has become something of a major political talking point among conservatives in the United States in recent years. Conservative commentators claim that western civilization is a glorious, wonderful thing that progressives are working tirelessly to destroy and conservatives are fighting honorably to protect.

In this article, I intend to take a deep dive into what conservatives say about “western civilization.” I’m going to examine their claims and assess how accurate these claims are. I’ll look at the things conservatives say make western civilization “unique” and “special” and see how “unique” and “special” these things really are. In the end, we will all see together what exactly “western civilization” really is.