Classics Archives - Page 9 of 33 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Did the Ancient Greeks and Romans Practice BDSM?

For those who are not aware, BDSM is a combined acronym for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. The term refers to a variety of sexual practices that fall under these umbrella categories. There are already many articles on the internet that talk about the supposed ancient history of BDSM, but I think that all these articles are hopelessly inadequate for anyone looking for accurate information on the subject.

Nearly all of these articles are clearly written by people who know very little about ancient history and are just looking for anything mentioned in modern secondary sources that seems to vaguely resemble contemporary BDSM practices. Additionally, most online articles about BDSM-like practices in the ancient world don’t cite any ancient sources whatsoever and repeat demonstrably false factoids as though they were true. In this article, I hope to counter the dearth of trustworthy information on this subject by providing my own analysis of it, using real ancient primary sources as evidence.

Here’s How We Know the Canonical Gospels Were Originally Anonymous

The four canonical gospels are traditionally attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew is said to have been a tax collector who became one of Jesus’s twelve apostles. Mark is a minor figure mentioned in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles who is said to have worked as a translator and secretary for the apostle Peter. Luke is said to have been a Greek physician who became a travelling companion of the apostle Paul. John is said to have been a fisherman who became one of Jesus’s twelve apostles along with his brother James.

Despite how well known these attributions are, however, New Testament scholars have realized for well over a hundred years now that the four canonical gospels were, in fact, originally anonymous works. They only became attributed to the authors to whom they are so widely attributed today in the second half of the second century CE, around a hundred years after the first of these gospels was originally written. In this article, I intend to explain the evidence for how scholars know this.

What Would Socrates Say about Modern Things?

Apart from Jesus, the ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates (lived c. 470 – 399 BCE) is possibly the one person who lived in ancient times who is most widely venerated today. Many people see him as a figure who is worthy of contemporary emulation. In the same way that Christians have often tried to justify their own actions and opinions by insisting that Jesus would be on their side, philosophers have tried to justify their actions and opinions by insisting that Socrates would be on their side—whatever their side happens to be.

Contemporary professors and philosophers have tried to posthumously marshal Socrates as a supporter for all kinds of contemporary causes, including going to graduate school in the humanities, opposing supposed university “cancel culture,” and even opposing vaccine mandates—but what was the historical Socrates like and what would he think of all the causes people are invoking his name in support of? More importantly, would Socrates’s opinion on any of these issues actually be worth listening to?

No, Alexander the Great Didn’t See Flying Saucers

If you’ve ever been on the internet or happened to turn on virtually any show that has aired on the History Channel within the past ten years, you’re probably aware that there are tons of people who are, shall we say, highly enthusiastic about so-called “unidentified flying objects” or “UFOs.” These UFO enthusiasts love to repeat a story which claims that the ancient Makedonian king Alexander the Great and his soldiers saw UFOs in the sky that looked like giant silvery shields at some point while he was on his campaigns.

The story that UFO enthusiasts keep repeating, however, is demonstrably entirely fictional. No version of the story ever appears in any ancient or medieval source. In fact, the earliest known mention of the story dates to the year 1959. Other people have debunked this story before, but I am going to debunk it again because UFO enthusiasts keep repeating it.

The Shocking Truth about Ancient Greek Makeup

There are tons of articles, blog posts, and YouTube videos online about ancient Greek makeup. Unfortunately, I have found that all of them are of utterly abysmal quality. None of the articles that I could find contained any citations to specific passages in ancient sources and all of them contained wildly egregious errors of fact and misconceptions seemingly derived from earlier online sources that, in turn, did not cite any ancient sources.

I have decided to remedy this situation by writing my own article about ancient Greek makeup. Everything I am about to say in this article will be concretely supported by specific passages from actual ancient Greek texts. If you’ve ever wanted to make yourself look like an ancient Greek beauty, or simply wondered what Greek women would look like in movies if they were portrayed historically accurately, then this is exactly the article for you!

Most Bizarre, Obscure Creatures from Ancient Greek Folklore

Greek mythology is famous for its bizarre and fascinating creatures. Nearly everyone has heard of the serpent-haired Gorgon Medusa with her stony gaze, the bull-headed Minotaur in its Labyrinth, the malicious harpies with the heads of women and bodies of birds, and so forth. This list, however, is not about any of those creatures.

The familiar creatures that everyone knows are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the strange beings that haunt the much broader world of ancient Greek folklore. Even more bizarre and fascinating creatures can be found mentioned in obscure passages of Greek and Roman literature. Here is a list of some truly bizarre creatures from ancient Greek folklore that definitely weren’t mentioned in D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.

Filthy, Obscure Greek Myths, Accidentally Preserved by Clement of Alexandria

The early Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 CE) was probably born in Athens, but he lived most of his life in Alexandria, where he was a teacher at the Catechetical School, also known as the Didaskalion. He was extraordinarily well educated and well read in ancient Greek literature, mythology, philosophy, and theology. As a devout Christian, however, he believed that traditional Greek and Roman religions were rife with immorality and depravity. His earliest surviving work is a treatise titled Exhortation to the Hellenes, in which he condemns traditional Greek and Roman religions and exhorts Greeks and Romans to adopt Christianity.

One of Clement’s primary goals in the treatise is to prove just how perverted and morally depraved traditional religions are. He rightly points out the immoral and often rapacious behavior of the Olympian deities in the stories that are well known, but he also retells some extremely obscure and absolutely filthy Greek myths that are not recorded in any other sources before him. As a result, Clement accidentally preserved these myths for posterity—myths that we otherwise would have no idea even existed. (One of them involves a god inventing a dildo in order to anally masturbate on a dead lover’s grave!)

Was Sappho Really a Lesbian?

One of the questions that I have frequently encountered online in discussions about ancient Greece is the question of whether the ancient Greek lyric poet Sappho (lived c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) was really a lesbian. On the surface level, the answer to this question seems like an obvious “yes.” After all, Sappho wrote poems in which she very expressly describes her erotic desire for other women, the word lesbian itself literally comes from the name of the island where she lived, and its synonym, the word sapphic, comes from her own name. There is even an entire subreddit about queer erasure called r/SapphoAndHerFriend, making fun of people who try to deny that Sappho was a lesbian.

I fully agree that there is no sense in which Sappho can be accurately described as “straight.” On the other hand, though, it would be an oversimplification to say that she was a lesbian in the contemporary sense. For one thing, the ancient Greeks generally did not think about sexuality in terms of which gender (or genders) a person was erotically attracted to, but rather in terms of whether they took the active or passive role during sex. There were no words in Ancient Greek in Sappho’s time that meant “gay,” “bi,” or “straight.” As such, it is highly unlikely that anyone in her time would have seen erotic attraction to women as a sign of any kind of innate identity.

Furthermore, the character “Sappho” who is the main speaker in Sappho’s poems is most likely a fictionalized literary persona, meaning that it is difficult to untangle the relationship between the speaker in the poems and the historical poet who composed them. Finally, given the fact that the vast majority of Sappho’s poems have not survived to the present day and ancient people told many stories about her having supposedly had affairs with men, it is possible that her character may have expressed erotic desire for men in poems or parts of poems that have not survived, which would make her what twenty-first-century westerners would consider bisexual.

Update: Dr. Christine Morris Confirms She Has Not Found the Trojan Horse

As frequent readers of my blog are already aware, on 10 August 2021, the website Greek Reporter republished an article that it originally published in 2014 claiming that archaeologists have found the remains of the Trojan horse. The story was quickly copied in both The Jerusalem Post and the International Business Times. The next day, however, I published a post on this blog titled “No, Archaeologists Have Not Found the Trojan Horse,” in which I pointed out evidence that the article published by Greek Reporter is a hoax written by someone with only very superficial knowledge of Aegean archaeology.

One of the pieces of evidence that I pointed out is the fact that the article cites a supposed professor at Boston University named Christine Morris as the leader of the team that has supposedly excavated the Trojan horse—but there is only one archaeologist who studies the Aegean Bronze Age named Christine Morris, she teaches at Trinity College Dublin, not Boston University, and, as far as I could tell, she has never excavated at Troy. Nonetheless, some people left comments on my post insisting that maybe Dr. Morris used to teach at Boston University at some point and maybe she really did discover the Trojan horse seven years ago.

I thought these objections were implausible, but, in the interest of being thorough, I emailed the real Dr. Morris using the email that is listed on her faculty webpage for Trinity College Dublin. She has very kindly taken the time out of her presumably very busy schedule to reply to my email. She has confirmed that she has never been affiliated with Boston University in any way, that she has never excavated at Troy or worked there in any capacity, that she has never claimed to have found the Trojan horse, and that the story that has been published by Greek Reporter and all these other news outlets is completely fabricated.

No, Archaeologists Have Not Found the Trojan Horse

On 10 August 2021, the website Greek Reporter published an article written by a contributor named Philip Chrysopoulos titled “Archaeologists Claim They’ve Discovered the Trojan Horse in Turkey.” The article claims that archaeologists have discovered the remains of a wooden structure inside the ancient city of Troy that they think is the actual Trojan horse. On the same day, The Jerusalem Post copied Greek Reporter’s story, publishing their own article titled “Did archaeologists find the Trojan horse?” that cites the Greek Reporter article as its only source.

The problem is that the whole story is a steaming pile of horse manure. The Greek Reporter article contains obvious signs that it is a deliberate hoax written in order to attract views in order to drive up ad revenues. By publishing this ridiculous, easily debunked story, Greek Reporter and The Jerusalem Post are both showing that, at the very best, they do not conduct even the most basic fact-checking or source verification and that they are not trustworthy news sites.