Roman Empire Archives - Page 6 of 13 - Tales of Times Forgotten

How Historically Accurate Is Netflix’s ‘Barbarians’?

There have a been a lot of Netflix originals related to ancient history recently. One such show is the German historical drama series Barbarians, which was first released on Netflix on 23 October 2020. The show is very loosely based on the historical events leading up to and surrounding the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, in which an alliance of several Germanic tribes won a crushing victory against the Romans and destroyed three whole Roman legions.

A lot of people have commented on Barbarians’ similarities to the History channel series Vikings, but there are a couple factors that differentiate it. One is that Barbarians is set about eight hundred years earlier than Vikings in the world of antiquity rather than the world of the Middle Ages. The other factor is that Barbarians is overtly a German show that is clearly made for a German target audience with German concerns; whereas Vikings was clearly made with British and North American target audiences primarily in mind.

Barbarians is mostly fiction, but, so far at least, it does generally stick more closely to the broad outline of historical events than Vikings. (There are, for instance, no bizarre scenes in which historical figures who actually lived centuries apart are portrayed as meeting in person.) In this article, I want to talk about aspects of the show that are historically accurate and other aspects where the makers of the show have taken some creative license.

Was Julius Caesar a Roman Emperor?

People who know very little about the Roman Empire will tell you that Julius Caesar was a Roman emperor. People who know a little bit more about the Roman Empire will tell you that Julius Caesar never held the title of emperor, but rather only the title of dictator perpetuo, meaning “dictator in perpetuity.”

Both of these groups of people are wrong. The truth is that things are complicated. Our English word emperor is derived from the Latin word imperator, which is a title that Julius Caesar actually held. Nonetheless, this title didn’t quite mean what we think of as “emperor” in the time when Julius Caesar was alive. In order to answer the question of whether Julius Caesar was a Roman emperor, we need to talk about how titles can change meaning over time.

Did Cleopatra Really Dissolve a Pearl in Vinegar?

There are a lot of famous stories about the Greek-Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator that are probably not historically true. For instance, as I discuss in this article from August 2019, while it is highly probable that Cleopatra killed herself, it is highly unlikely that she really did so by allowing an asp to bite her on the breast. Similarly, as I discuss in this article from October 2020, it is virtually certain that she never owned any sort of vibrator powered by angry bees.

One of the most famous stories about her that I have not yet addressed, though, is the story that she once dissolved an ancient pearl that was worth tens of millions of sesterces in vinegar as a party trick to impress her lover Marcus Antonius. Unlike the bizarre vibrator story, the story about the pearl is actually found in the ancient sources. Nevertheless, it is almost certainly a fabrication invented by Roman propagandists to portray Cleopatra in the worst possible light.

Was Cleopatra Really Hypersexual?

In popular culture, the Ptolemaic Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator is routinely portrayed as wildly hypersexual. If you’ve been on the internet lately, there’s a good chance you’ve heard a lot of crazy stories about how she supposedly threw wild sex orgies, had sex with over a hundred men in one night, had a vibrator that was powered by angry bees, and once offered to have sex with anyone who wanted it under the condition that they would be executed the next morning.

None of these stories have any kind of basis in the ancient sources, however. In fact, historically speaking, Cleopatra is only known for certain to have had sex with two men in her entire life: Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius. The popular image of Cleopatra as an insatiable nymphomaniac is ultimately rooted in a vicious Roman propaganda campaign to discredit her, but modern authors, filmmakers, video game developers, and internet factoid-mongers have taken it to a whole new level.

Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans White?

Most people assume that everyone who lived in ancient Greece and Rome was white. This is a notion that has been continually reinforced through modern films and television shows. This is especially obvious in the egregiously historically inaccurate film 300, which portrays all the Greek characters as white and all the Persian characters as people of color. How accurate is this idea really, though? Were the Greeks and Romans really white? What does “whiteness” actually mean anyway?

I won’t deny that the majority of people who lived in Greece and Italy in ancient times would probably be considered white by most Americans if they were alive today. Nonetheless, the ancient Greeks and Romans certainly did not think of themselves as white and modern Greeks and Italians haven’t always been considered white either.

Furthermore, there were undoubtedly people whom we would consider Brown and Black present in ancient Greece and Rome from a very early date. These people almost certainly included famous ancient philosophers, writers, theologians, and even Roman emperors. In fact, people whom we would consider people of color probably made up a significant proportion of the total population of the Roman Empire, if not the majority.

No, Liberals Don’t Hate the Humanities

An op-ed by Itxu Díaz published on the website of the American conservative magazine National Review on 19 September 2020 starts with the headline “Why Does the Left Hate the Humanities?” It’s a rather surprising headline considering the fact that conservatives have spent decades stereotyping the humanities as a useless field dominated by evil leftists.

The headline becomes a bit less surprising, though, when you realize that, by “the humanities,” Díaz is actually talking about something that might be better termed “white male heritage studies.” He isn’t advocating for people to study, say, Native American history, women’s studies, or queer literary theory; he’s advocating for people to study a handful of specific works of ancient Greek and Roman literature that are traditionally regarded as “classics” from a very traditionalist, heritage-focused perspective.

I am a currently a junior at Indiana University Bloomington pursuing a double major in history and classical studies. My main focus is in the study of ancient Greece. This means I have studied exactly the kind of material that Díaz thinks people should be studying. I agree with him that it is important for people to study the ancient Greeks and Romans. Unfortunately, I completely disagree with him about why and how these civilizations should be studied.

I don’t generally consider myself a “leftist.” Instead, I generally tend to think of myself as a liberal and a progressive. Nonetheless, I realize that, when Díaz complains about “leftists” who supposedly “hate the humanities,” he’s talking about people like me. Here is my response to what he has written.

What Does the Genesis Creation Story Mean?

The first three chapters of the Book of Genesis have been studied, interpreted, reinterpreted, and misunderstood by people of diverse religious convictions for around 2,500 years. The stories recounted in these chapters have had an enormous impact on world religions, mythologies, literatures, and cultures. Most people think that they understand these stories. Nonetheless misconceptions abound—not just about what the text means, but also about who wrote it, what it actually says, what sources the text is based on, and how the text has historically been interpreted.

In this article, I want to take a deep dive into the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis, debunk some popular misconceptions, and hopefully do my part to help others understand these stories that have become so influential. This is going to be a bit of a long read, but, by the end of it, hopefully, you’ll know pretty much everything you wanted to know about the Genesis creation stories.

Why Is Constantinople Now Called İstanbul?

When I was in seventh grade social studies class, we learned about how the city of Constantinople is now known as İstanbul. To make sure none of us ever forgot that Constantinople is İstanbul, my teacher played us the song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” which was originally written in 1953 by Jimmy Kennedy and Nat Simon, but is best known today from a cover released in 1990 by the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants. In case you’ve never heard it, here’s a video with the song on YouTube:

One thing my seventh grade social studies teacher never explained, though, is the reason why Constantinople is now known as İstanbul. It’s not just because “people liked it better that way”; there are actually a number of complex and fascinating political reasons why the name was changed. The story involves a single city with a half dozen different names, a dozen different kings with the same name, World War I, and an especially vicious Barbary macaque.

The Hagia Sophia Is Now a Mosque

The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was built by the Byzantines in the sixth century AD as a Christian church. It was the largest and arguably the most famous Christian church in the world for nearly a thousand years. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it was converted into a mosque and, after the establishment of the modern Republic of Turkey, it was converted into a museum.

Then, on 10 July 2020, amidst international outcry, the Turkish government officially converted it back into a mosque. On 21 August 2020, the Chora Church, another famous Byzantine church in İstanbul that had previously been converted into a mosque and then a museum, was converted back into a mosque as well.

These decisions, in particular the decision regarding the Hagia Sophia, have triggered a great deal of international debate. Unfortunately, there is a very long and complex history behind this discussion that is often left out. In order to fully understand this debate, we need to talk about the history of the Hagia Sophia, who built it, why it was turned into a mosque to begin with, and why it was later turned into a museum.

Transgender and Intersex People in the Ancient World

It is popularly believed that transgender, intersex, and other gender-nonconforming people only started existing fairly recently and that they are an aberration of modern times. This could not possibly be further from the truth. It is true that the word “transgender” is fairly new, since it was first coined in 1965, but there have been people whom we might consider transgender ever since at least the beginning of recorded history.

In this article, I want to talk about some examples of figures from ancient history, mythology, and literature whom we might consider transgender, intersex, or otherwise gender-nonconforming. Some of these people are fictional; others of them are historical. Not all of them fit perfectly under our modern definition of “transgender,” but all of them are of interest to the discussion of transgender history.

Regarding pronoun use, in the following article, I will mostly be using the English equivalents of the pronouns that are actually used in the ancient sources, which may or may not be the pronouns that the individuals discussed here would have preferred to have been used. Unfortunately, the people I will be discussing in this article who actually existed have all been dead for thousands of years, so it is impossible for us to ask what their preferences are.