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We all love the Fourth of July. It is a time for fireworks, family, and patriotism. Of course, you should probably be aware that some of the things we consider patriotic today have a somewhat dodgy history. Take the Pledge of Allegiance, for instance. Surely nothing says American patriotism like the Pledge of Allegiance… until you remember that it was actually written by a socialist whose vision for America was quite different from what we admire today.

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Our earliest sources on the historical Sokrates–Platon and Xenophon–tell us surprisingly little about Sokrates’s marriage. Sokrates’s wife Xanthippe briefly appears in one scene in Platon’s dialogue Phaidon, where she runs up to Sokrates and cries on his shoulder just before he is about to drink the cup of hemlock that will kill him. Sokrates orders Kriton to send someone to take her home so that she will not be there when he is forced to commit suicide. She is never mentioned ever again in any of Platon’s other dialogues.

Continue reading “Xanthippe: The Bizarre, Yet Ever-Worsening State of Sokrates’s Marriage”

We Americans like to think that our literature is unique and that, when we declared independence from Britain, we also declared our independence from European literature. This was not the case. The quintessential American story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving bears striking similarities to the ancient Greek story of Epimenides of Knossos.

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In his book The Travels of Marco Polo, Rustichello da Pisa tells a story claiming that there was once a man known as the “Old Man of the Mountain,” who built a garden in the mountains and designed it exactly according to the precise description of Paradise given in the Koran. He would then abduct people, drug them with hashish, and take them to the garden. Then, when they woke up, he would convince them that it was Paradise itself. Then, after they had lived in the garden for a while, the Old Man of the Mountain would tell them that they needed to start holding up their end of the bargain; he would send them out to go kill certain people, telling them that, if they died in the attempt, they would only return to the garden. These people were known as hashishiyyin, which is Arabic for “hashish-smokers.” This is the origin of our modern English word assassin.

Continue reading “Brutal Words: The Unique Origins of Words Associated With Cruelty”

I have already written about how the modern story of “Cinderella” is probably derived from the ancient Greek story of Rhodopis, but the story of the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” also originates from ancient Greece.

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Disney cartoons are an American cultural icon. Sadly, Disney has a habit of taking age-old stories, changing everything about them, and making cartoons of them. Then, unfortunately, the Disney version somehow automatically becomes the “official,” orthodox version of the story, even though the Disney versions often have very little at all in common with the originals.

Continue reading “Misunderstood Myths, Part Six: The Moirai and the Graiai”

Today, every time someone sees a swastika, he or she automatically thinks “Nazism” and whenever someone sees a pentagram or an upside-down cross, he or she immediately thinks “Satanism.” All three of these symbols, however, originally possessed very different meanings with far less sinister connotations.

Continue reading “What Three Hated Symbols Used to Mean Before They Were Hijacked by Extremists”

In 1751, Isaac Norris, the speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly commissioned the creation of a new bell for the Pennsylvania Statehouse (later known as Independence Hall) in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of William Penn’s Charter of Privileges in 1701.

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March, as most of you probably already know, is Women’s History Month. In honor of this month, I thought I would write a series of articles about famous women from the ancient world. Unfortunately, this idea has been greatly hindered by the extreme rarity of such women. In fact, the ancient world was so overwhelmingly male-dominated that only a tiny handful of women’s names have even been recorded. Fortunately, however, there are a few famous women from the ancient world whose achievements truly stand out; finding them is just more difficult. Many of these famous ancient women were poets since poetry-writing was one of the few career options that was open to them.

In fact, the very first poet whose name has been recorded was actually a woman. Her name was Enheduanna and she was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad.

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Every year on March 17, people all across the United States celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but only a few people actually know who Saint Patrick really was.

The historical Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary who lived during the middle part of the fifth century A.D. Most early saints do not have any extant writings. Consequently, all information about these saints can only come from records written by others, who sometimes lived much later than the saint him or herself. This, however, is not the case with Saint Patrick. Two documents written by Patrick himself have survived to the present day. The first of these documents is a brief autobiography entitled Confession. The second is a letter written to the soldiers of Coroticus. These sources provide us with a great deal of firsthand information about Saint Patrick’s life.

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