Classics Archives - Page 18 of 33 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Did the Ancient Greeks Really Think Archers Were Cowards?

There is a popular misconception that the ancient Greeks believed that archers were all cowards because they attacked from a distance rather than from up close. What is often ignored is that some of the most revered heroes in Greek mythology, including Herakles, Philoktetes, Odysseus, and Teukros, were archers and so were the deities Artemis and Apollon. The Greeks also used archers extensively in warfare.

While there are a couple passages from surviving works of ancient Greek literature in which certain characters do condemn archers as cowards, these passages are usually taken out of context. One of these passages comes from a character who has just been shot in the foot by an archer. The other passage comes from a villain in a tragedy who is immediately refuted by one of the good characters. When read in context, it becomes clear that these passages do not demonstrate a general disdain for archers in ancient Greek culture.

Sean Hannity Does Not Know Latin

Apparently, Sean Hannity, the conservative host of the political commentary show Hannity on Fox News, has a new book. The title is Live Free Or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink. The book is currently set to be released by the conservative publishing imprint Threshold Editions on 4 August 2020. Judging from the description on Amazon, the book is going to be yet another banal diatribe attacking liberals as evil and praising President Donald Trump as the savior of American freedom.

Some people have noticed, though, that there is a Latin motto that appears on the front cover. It reads: “Vivamus vel libero perit Americae.” Ordinarily, this wouldn’t warrant any attention. After all, Sean Hannity—an older conservative white man who thinks he knows a lot more than he really does—is exactly the sort of person you would expect to have a Latin motto. There is a slight problem with this particular motto, though; it’s complete and utter gobbledygook. It is clear that whoever came up with this motto does not even know the basic noun cases in Latin or how they work.

What Did the Buddha Really Look Like?

In the western world, whenever someone hears the word “Buddha,” they virtually always immediately think of East Asian statues depicting a smiling obese man with a bald head and elongated earlobes dressed in a robe that displays his enormous belly. You can find these statues all over East Asia and miniature versions of them are often sold as souvenirs in gift shops. Because these statues are referred to as “Laughing Buddhas,” most westerners naturally assume that they depict Siddhārtha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.

Contrary to popular belief, however, these statues do not, in fact, depict the Gautama Buddha, but rather a completely different figure from Chinese folklore. In this article, I want to talk about the real iconography of Siddhārtha Gautama. I also want to talk about the evidence in the surviving written sources for what the historical Buddha really looked like.

The Strangest Books in the Bible

The Bible is a collection of various ancient texts that are considered by Christians to be the inspired Word of God. The number of books in the Bible varies depending on which branch of Christianity you happen to belong to. The standard Protestant Bible only has sixty-six books, the standard Roman Catholic Bible has seventy-three books, and the standard Eastern Orthodox Bible has seventy-eight books.

Many of the texts that are included in the Bible seem rather strange—at least when you read them for the first time. There are some books in the Bible that are a bit peculiar in the sense that they don’t fit in well with the other books in the Bible. Then there are other books in the Bible that just seem downright bizarre—at least until you decipher what they’re talking about.

In this article, I want to talk about five of the most unusual books in the Bible. These are books that are striking either because they are so different from the others or because they employ such bizarre imagery.

Is the United States a Democracy or a Republic?

There is considerable debate among people in the United States over whether this country is supposed to be a democracy, a republic, or both. Generally, liberals and progressives tend to argue that the United States should be both a democracy and a republic, while conservatives tend to argue that it should only be a republic.

In this article, I want to examine the history of this debate, look at the etymologies and definitions of the words republic and democracy, and decide which of these words best describes the form of government that exists in the United States.

Could Countries Today Restore the Religions They Had in Antiquity?

Most people have heard about the religions that were practiced in ancient times in places like Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia, and Scandinavia. Some people have wondered things like, “What happened to those religions? Would it be possible to revive them today in the countries where they were once practiced? What would it be like if someone did?”

Not all ancient religions completely died out. Most notably, Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Iran, never completely died out and is still practiced by some people in Iran today. Other ancient religions, such as ancient Greek polytheism, did die out, but have been revived by small groups of worshippers in the modern age.

None of these ancient religions, however, are the dominant religion in the countries where they were once practiced today and it is highly unlikely that any of them will become dominant in those countries again anytime in the near future.

Were the Ancient Spartans Blond?

The ancient Spartans have been a subject of intense fascination and speculation for thousands of years. The Sparta that exists in the popular imagination is often quite different from the one that existed in historical reality. This phenomenon is so well established that it even has a name; historians have labelled the imaginary Sparta that has so intrigued people throughout history “the Spartan mirage.”

One very peculiar aspect of how Sparta has been imagined in modern times is the idea that the overwhelming majority of the ancient Spartans had blond hair. This idea was far more popular a century ago than it is today, but it still hasn’t entirely died out. The idea is especially prominent among white supremacists, who like to imagine the ancient Spartans as blond Aryans who defended Greece against the non-white barbarian hordes of the Persian Empire.

The idea of the “blond Spartans,” however, is based on very little evidence. People mostly only continued to believe in it because it supports their own mythology of racial superiority.

What Would the Ancient Greeks Think of Donald Trump?

The current occupant of the White House is such a unique and peculiar figure in the history of the United States that many people have wondered what various people from history would think of him. I’ve encountered a number of questions dealing with this theme on Quora. For instance, many people have wondered what the Founding Fathers would think of him. What would Cicero think? What would Socrates think? There are so many different questions and scenarios that people have been asking about. Today, though, we’re going to look at the question of what the ancient Greek public at large would think of him.

It is extremely difficult to say what the ancient Greeks would think of Donald Trump, partly because the ancient Greeks lived in a world that was so drastically different from our own. If someone brought all the people who lived in the Greek world during the Classical Period (lasted c. 510 – c. 323 BC) back from the dead today, they would barely even recognize the world we live in.

Furthermore, the ancient Greeks were as diverse in their thoughts as any people from any time period, so, obviously, opinions pertaining to Donald Trump would vary quite considerably from person to person. Some people would probably like Trump, while others would detest him.

Anything that we say on this subject will necessarily be speculation, since, obviously the ancient Greeks are all long dead and it is impossible to say for certain what their opinions would be. Nonetheless, I think we can plausibly speculate about how the majority of people who lived in ancient Greece would most likely view Trump, if they were suddenly brought to life today and told about him.

How Do We Know Ancient Texts Are Really Ancient?

There seems to be a lot of people who think that, because we do not have the original manuscripts of ancient texts, that is somehow deeply suspicious. While it is certainly true that there are some places in some texts where we are not completely sure what the original text said, in the vast majority of cases, it is possible to reconstruct exactly or at least almost exactly what the original text said. Even when the exact original wording of a text is unclear, we usually have a pretty good idea of what the original author wrote.

Were the Ancient Egyptians Black?

There is a lot of public controversy over which “race” the ancient Egyptians belonged to. Western media has traditionally portrayed nearly all ancient Egyptians as having white skin. Unfortunately, some films are still portraying the Egyptians this way; the 2014 film Exodus: Gods and Kings and the 2016 film Gods of Egypt both received widespread criticism for the fact that nearly all the lead roles were played by white actors.

Nevertheless, I think that, with a few exceptions, nowadays, most people realize that the idea of the ancient Egyptians as almost entirely what we consider “white” is nothing but a racist fantasy. A great deal of controversy still rages, though, over whether the ancient Egyptians were what we consider “black.” A number of authors have tried to argue that ancient Egypt was exclusively or primarily a “black civilization” and that the ancient Egyptians defined themselves as “black people.”

Since the skin color of the ancient Egyptians is a matter of such great controversy, in this article, I want to take a thorough and honest look at the evidence. In this article, we will examine evidence from Egyptian iconography, from Egyptian mummies, from ancient Greek descriptions of the Egyptians, from genetics, and from the conquests and migrations of recorded history. We will discover that Egypt has always been a very ethnically diverse place and that the ancient Egyptians cannot be uniformly classified as belonging to any particular “race.”