Homeric epics Archives - Page 3 of 4 - 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.

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.

If You Like Ancient Greek Texts, Thank the Byzantines for Preserving Them

There is a widespread belief among members of the general public that ancient Greek texts were mostly only preserved by the Arabs through Arabic translations. The Byzantine Empire is rarely mentioned in the context of the preservation of classical texts. When the Byzantines are mentioned in this context, it is usually by writers who see them as ignorant fundamentalist Christian obscurantists.

Contrary to what popular culture would lead you to believe, however, the Byzantine Empire did retain Greco-Roman knowledge. In fact, the vast majority of ancient Greek texts that have survived to the present day are primarily known from Greek manuscripts that were either copied in the Byzantine Empire or copied from texts that were copied in the Byzantine Empire.

The idea that the majority of ancient Greek texts have only been preserved because they were translated by Arabic scholars is largely a misconception. There are a few lesser-known classical Greek texts that have been preserved only through Arabic translations, but the vast majority of the really famous texts that people still study today have actually been preserved in the original Greek.

The widespread ignorance of the Byzantines’ role in the preservation of classical Greek and Roman texts is just one small part of a centuries-old, systematic effort by westerners to marginalize the Byzantine Empire and minimize its importance in European history.

Is There Really a Scene in the ‘Iliad’ Where Achilles Calls Hektor Out of Troy to Face Him?

If you ask someone who has never read the Iliad to name one scene from it, chances are, the first scene that person will probably name is the scene with the Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse, though, is actually never even mentioned in the Iliad. The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hektor, long before the fall of Troy. The story of the Trojan Horse is first told in flashback by the blind bard Demodokos in Book Eight of the Odyssey.

If you tell the person that the Iliad ends with the funeral of Hektor and ask them to name another scene, then they’ll probably tell you the iconic scene where Achilles goes to the gates of Troy and calls for Hektor to come out and face him. It’s a scene that appears in nearly every adaptation of the Trojan War made in the past two decades. That scene, though, doesn’t appear in the Iliad at all either. In fact, it doesn’t appear in any ancient source whatsoever; it is purely an invention of Hollywood.

Did the Ancient Greeks Really Believe in Their Myths?

On Quora, I have noticed there seems to be an endless number of questions dealing with the same overall theme: “Did the ancient Greeks and Romans really believe in their gods?” and “Did the ancient Greeks really believe in their myths?”

I think these questions are born from a strange discordance that people have noticed between the ancient Greeks’ reputation for rational skepticism and the stories we still tell about their gods and heroes—stories that—let’s face it—in most cases are pretty unbelievable to say the least.

Thus people have wondered, “How on Earth could a people so supposedly enlightened believe in such absurd stories?” As it turns out, though, believing in the Greek deities and believing in Greek myths are two different things; many people in ancient times believed in the deities without necessarily believing in all the stories attached to them.

How Violent Was the Pre-Modern World Really?

It is no secret that the ancient and medieval worlds were, in general, more violent than today’s world. After all, today in the twenty-first century, most countries do not have crucifixions, gladiator fights, or public executions that involve people being torn apart by wild beasts. Cities today rarely have to worry about rival cities attacking them and most modern cities are not even fortified. Clearly, the world has changed quite drastically since antiquity.

Nonetheless, the degree of violence that existed in the ancient and medieval worlds was not nearly so great as many people have been led to believe by popular films and television shows, which often portray an absurd level of violence that is completely beyond the amount of violence that actually existed during any period of human history.

Here’s Where You Can Buy a Real First Edition Copy of the ‘Iliad’!

In 2015, a certain Hollywood film notoriously claimed that you can get an original, first edition copy of the Iliad for “a buck at a garage sale.” After the film came out, large numbers of people around the world began searching for places where they could buy their own first edition copy of the Iliad. I decided to take a look into this issue. If you have ever wanted to own a first edition copy of the Iliad, here’s how to get one.

Were Ancient People Conscious?

In 1976, the American psychologist Julian Jaynes (lived 1920 – 1997) published a controversial book titled The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. In this book, Jaynes claimed that human beings were not conscious of their own thoughts until around 1000 BC and that stories about gods speaking to people originated from people hearing their own inner voices and mistaking them for the voices of external deities telling them what to do.

Jaynes’s claims were regarded as fringe, baseless, and bizarre even when he first proposed them back in the 1970s and today they are almost universally regarded by psychologists as the debunked relic of an earlier, less scientific stage in the development of modern psychology. Nonetheless, Jaynes’s hypothesis of the bicameral mind has garnered something of a cult following among non-scholars and has had considerable influence in popular culture, so I suppose it is worth writing a lengthy rebuttal to it.

Greek Heroes Who Lived to Old Age

We are all accustomed to hearing stories about Greek mythological heroes who died young. Indeed, at times, it seems as though a young death is an essential element of heroism in Greek mythology. According to Book Nine of the Iliad, the young Achilleus was offered a choice: he could either live short, glorious life and live on forever in stories and songs or live a long, peaceful life and never win any glory. Achilleus chose the former option. It may come as a surprise to some people, then, that there are actually quite a few Greek heroes who are said to have lived to old age. Here are a few of the most famous:

Heinrich Schliemann Debunked

Anyone who has studied archaeology has heard of Heinrich Schliemann. He is popularly acclaimed as the bold, talented, German-American amateur archaeologist who discovered the lost city of Troy at Hisarlık in what is now northwest Turkey. In truth, this image is largely a fabrication of Schliemann’s own making. The real Heinrich Schliemann was a lying, cheating, grifting, thieving charlatan and overall scumbag who only became famous because he was extremely rich and highly skilled in the art of lying to make himself seem more impressive than he really was.

Even though Schliemann is popularly credited as the “discoverer” of Troy, he was not the first person to identify Hisarlık as Troy. He was not even the first person to excavate there. Furthermore, his attempts to excavate the ruins of Troy were so hopelessly incompetent that he ended up actually destroying most of the ancient site.