Misconceptions Archives - Page 13 of 22 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Ancient Cities Weren’t All Just Abandoned

There seems to be a widespread misconception that, after 476 AD, civilization just disappeared from the Mediterranean world and all the cities of the ancient world were totally abandoned. That’s not what really happened. In fact, all the most famous cities of the classical world survived after the so-called “fall of Rome.” People didn’t just leave or die out and leave all the cities completely barren.

Cities like Athens, Sparta, Alexandria, and Rome have long, fascinating post-antique histories and are even still populated even today. In this article, we will explore what really happened to these cities after the so-called “fall of Rome” and the “end of antiquity.” The true history is actually a lot more interesting than the popular narrative about civilization just totally collapsing.

No, “Secretary” Does Not Mean “Secret-Keeper”

There is a popular claim that has been circulating for a long time claiming that the word secretary comes from Latin meaning “keeper of secrets.” This idea stems from a misunderstanding of the meaning of the Latin word secretum, which is the source of our English word secret but usually has a slightly different meaning in Latin.

No, Nostradamus Didn’t Predict COVID-19—But I Did!

The French esoteric writer Michel de Nostredame (lived 1503 – 1566), who is better known by his Latinized name “Nostradamus,” is famous for his book Les Prophéties, a collection of quatrains published in 1555, which Nostradamus’s supporters claim contains accurate predictions of future events.

Immediately after any major event happens, Nostradamus’s supporters always flock to claim that he predicted it. They are especially keen to claim this after major disasters and international tragedies. It is only natural, then, that Nostradamus’s supporters are now claiming that he successfully predicted the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hundreds of years in advance.

Unfortunately for fans of the famous French mystic, he did absolutely nothing of the sort. Some of the alleged “prophecies” attributed to Nostradamus online are just outright hoaxes; others are real things he wrote that have just been contorted and misinterpreted to make them seem like genuine predictions.

There is someone, though, who did correctly predict this pandemic long in advance: me!

Did Ancient “Pagans” Really Worship Nature?

If you go around and ask a bunch of people what “paganism” is, chances are, most people will tell you something like “nature worship.” It is true that some contemporary Neopagans do indeed worship nature, albeit in various forms and in various ways. Even many Neopagans who do not literally worship nature still hold nature in very high regard. This conception of “paganism” as “nature worship,” however, is, for the most part, not applicable to the ancient world.

The term “paganism” is problematic in a historical context for all kinds of reasons, but it is most often applied to the various polytheistic religions that were practiced in the greater Mediterranean region (i.e., the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe) in ancient times before Christianity. When we look at these religions, we actually find a rather startling absence of nature-worshippers.

For most people in the ancient Mediterranean world, nature was a frightening and dangerous thing that could never really be trusted. Most of the deities worshipped in ancient times by so-called “pagans” were not seen as personifications of nature or natural forces, but rather as supernatural beings governing certain areas of human endeavor. Some deities were associated with aspects of the natural world, but the deities themselves were almost always clearly distinguished from the phenomena with which they were associated. Furthermore, even those deities associated with natural phenomena were usually associated with cultural phenomena as well.

How Much Were Gold Coins Really Worth During the Middle Ages?

In modern fantasy games set in worlds based loosely on medieval Europe, gold coins are portrayed as the normal medium of everyday exchange. In Dungeons & Dragons, for instance, players collect generic “gold coins” and use these coins to buy just about everything, including supplies for their quests and drinks at the local tavern. Trading in “gold pieces” is also a common trope in many fantasy novels.

People in Europe during the Middle Ages really did use gold coins, but gold coins were much rarer and much more valuable than they are often portrayed in modern fantasy games and novels. Daily commerce in Europe during the Middle Ages was conducted not with gold coins, but rather with silver and bronze coins. In fact, most ordinary people during the Middle Ages probably rarely even saw gold coins.

Why Did We Start Using Greek Names for Greek Deities?

Today, in the English-speaking world, the classical deities are most widely known by their Greek names. Up until the late nineteenth century, though, the deities of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds were almost exclusively known in the west by their Roman names. The Greek names were almost totally obscure among English-speakers and they were almost never used.

What is it that changed? Why did we stop using the Roman names and start using the Greek names? The answer to this question is complicated and there are a lot of cultural factors that go into it, but I think that a large part of the motivation for the switch came as a result of the belief that the Greeks were culturally superior to the Romans because they were supposedly more “western.”

No, Nero Didn’t “Fiddle While Rome Burned”

The phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” has been in the news a lot again lately for some rather surprising reasons. As most people already know, the deadly COVID-19 epidemic is spreading across the globe. According to The New York Times, as of today, at least 973 people in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least thirty people in the United States are confirmed to have died of it. It is currently estimated that COVID-19 has a case fatality rate of around 3.4%. Meanwhile, the stock market continues to plummet at record rates.

Donald J. Trump—who is somehow the actual president of the United States—reportedly spent a large part of the weekend golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. For some reason, though, on Sunday, 8 March 2020, Trump decided that it would be a good idea to retweet a meme of himself literally playing a fiddle with the caption “My next piece is called… nothing can stop what’s coming.” Trump commented on the meme, saying, “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!”

Naturally, people immediately began using the meme to criticize Trump’s response to the ongoing crises, comparing him to the Roman emperor Nero (lived 37 – 68 AD), who is famously said to have played the fiddle during the Great Fire of Rome in July 64 AD, which destroyed large parts of the city of Rome. I wrote a detailed article back in November 2017 debunking the story about Nero “fiddling while Rome burned.” Given the contemporary situation, I figured I’d revisit the subject and debunk it afresh.

Debunking the So-Called “Baghdad Battery”

By now, most people have probably heard about the so-called “Baghdad battery,” an object that has been claimed by many people to be an ancient Persian galvanic cell, or electric battery. The so-called “battery” consists of a fourteen-centimeter tall ovoid ceramic pot, a copper tube affixed to the aside of the pot with an asphalt seal, and an iron rod affixed to the inside of the copper tube by the same asphalt seal. There was evidence of acidic residue on the inside.

A hypothesis originally proposed in 1940 by the Austrian archaeologist Wilhelm König holds that this object might be an ancient Persian galvanic cell that might have been used for electroplating. This hypothesis, despite having been repeatedly debunked, keeps being repeated by popular science authors.

König’s battery hypothesis also, unfortunately, keeps getting repeated by people who I can only describe as “New Agers” who keep claiming that the so-called “Baghdad battery” is an “out-of-place artifact” or “OOPArt” and that it is evidence that there was a prehistoric civilization with modern levels of technology that we don’t have record of.

In reality, even if the so-called “Baghdad battery” really were a battery, it certainly would not be evidence for the existence of an unbelievably technologically advanced prehistoric civilization. Furthermore, archaeologists actually have a pretty good idea of what the so-called “Baghdad battery” was used for—and it almost certainly wasn’t used as a battery.

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.

Plague Doctor Costumes Were Actually a Good Idea

There are a lot of unfortunate misconceptions out there about the infamous bird-beaked costume worn by plague doctors. One misconception is that this costume was worn during the Middle Ages. Another misconception is that the costume was supposed to protect the doctor by “scaring” the disease away. Another misconception is that the costume was totally ineffective.

In reality, the plague doctor costume was only invented in the seventeenth century and the beak was supposed to protect the doctor by supposedly filtering infectious vapors from the air he breathed, not by “scaring” the disease. Plague doctor costumes were undoubtedly flawed, partly due to limited understanding of how disease was spread and partly due to technological limitations, but the idea behind them was actually a good one and they probably did provide doctors with some degree of protection from the plague.