Making the Distant Past Relevant to the Present Day
One thing that many people do not know about the New Testament is that it actually contains several direct quotes from certain ancient Greek writers. In fact, there are a total of at least five quotes from four different Greek writers found throughout the pages of the New Testament. The following is a list of all of all the known quotations. The verses are given in full with the quotations written in bold:
Continue reading “Greek Writers Quoted in the New Testament”
Obviously, today, most people realize that ghosts are not real. In ancient times, however, it seems that belief in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena was apparently quite widespread. In his satirical novel The Lover of Lies, the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (who wrote exclusively in ancient Greek) tells a very humorous anecdote about an elaborate prank that was allegedly pulled on the wise philosopher Demokritos of Abdera.
Continue reading “Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Five: Pulling Pranks on Demokritos”
So far in this series I have described just a few of the most popular misconceptions about classical mythology. One huge misconception that I have failed to address, however, is the very notion of “classical mythology” in general.
In his Life of Kimon, the Greek biographer and essayist Ploutarchos of Chaironeia tells one of the spookiest of all ancient Greek ghost stories.
The story is set in Ploutarchos’s own hometown of Chaironeia, a relatively small, peaceful village not far from Delphoi. The story takes place many years before Ploutarchos’s time when Chaironeia had just recently been annexed by the Roman Empire. In order to ensure that the inhabitants of the town remained docile and complicit with Roman occupation, the Romans had stationed a cohort of soldiers there.
Continue reading “Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Four: The Boarded-Up Bathhouse”
When you imagine ancient Greece, you probably imagine stark, white, marble columns and white, marble statues with vacant, pupilless eyes standing in majestic poses. In actuality, however, ancient Greek statues were originally painted with bright, primary colors. The only reason why they appear white today is because all of the paint has flaked off.
Continue reading “Surprise! Classical Sculptures Were Actually Brightly Painted!”
Back in the late 2000s, the book Twilight was outrageously popular among teenaged girls (much to the great annoyance of everyone else). What you may not know, however, is that the vampire romance story was actually invented in ancient Greece.
Simonides of Keos was one of the most famous ancient Greek lyric poets, but there is a very strange and unusual story about him recorded by the Roman orator Cicero in On Divination 1.27.56 and also in the Palatine Anthology.
Supposedly, one day as Simonides was walking by the shore on the island of Lesbos, he discovered a dead corpse lying in the water, apparently belonging to a man who had recently drowned. The corpse had no identification attached to it and no one had claimed it. Simonides pulled the corpse out of the water and gave it a proper funeral with full honors, even though he had no idea who it belonged to.
Continue reading “Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Two: Simonides of Keos and the Dead Sailor”
In his letter To Sura, the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Younger recounts one of the oldest and most famous ghost stories of all time.
There was once a Stoic philosopher named Athenodoros of Tarsos. Athenodoros came to the city of Athens, where he learned that there was a large house for sale at an extraordinarily cheap price. When Athenodoros asked why the house was available at such a low price, he was informed that, every night, the clashing of chains could be heard coming from a certain room in the house and that, after a while, the sound of clattering chains would grow louder and louder until, at last, the terrifying apparition of an old, decrepit man would appear, standing in the room with iron chains attached to his arms and dragging along on the floor behind him. The man was said to be extremely emaciated, as though he had been starved to death, and his hair and beard were said to be tangled and matted.
Continue reading “Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part One: Athenodoros and the Haunted House”
#1: First of all, that is not a toga you are wearing to begin with.
Today, most so-called “togas” are made from old bedsheets, which are rectangular. The classical Roman toga, however, was always made from a roughly semicircular piece of cloth. The classical toga was comprised of a single sheet of cloth, but this piece of cloth was actually much larger than the size of a single bedsheet. That is the reason why in Roman statues you always see ripples of flowing cloth.
Furthermore, the classical toga was always made from wool, whereas most modern bedsheets are made from cotton. In ancient times, cotton could only be obtained through importing it from India, which was half a world away from Italy. Only the extremely ultra wealthy would have been able to afford any kind of clothes made from cotton.
Continue reading “Why Everything about Your Toga Party is All Wrong”
Today, January 1 is widely celebrated as the beginning of the New Year, but it was not always that way.
Our modern calendar is based off the ancient Roman calendar, but the ancient Roman calendar is a bit different from ours. This is what scholars believe the ancient Roman calendar would have looked like originally:
Martius
Aprilis
Maius
Iunius
Quintilis
Sextilis
September
October
November
December
Continue reading “Happy New Year? Depends on Which Calendar You Are Using…”
