Question: “Do you ever make mistakes?”
The ancient Greeks often used the saying “γνῶθι σεαυτόν” (gnôthi seautón), which literally means “Know yourself.” This saying is used in ancient sources in a variety of contexts, but, as I discuss in this article from August 2018, it is most often used as a reminder that a person is human and therefore imperfect, mortal, and fallible.
I am a human being. Therefore, I do make mistakes. I try as hard as I can to avoid making mistakes whenever possible, but, sometimes, in spite of all my best efforts, I do make them. If you see anything on this site that you know is inaccurate, please leave a polite comment or contact me to notify me of my mistake so that I may correct it.
Factual accuracy is extremely important to me and I want to make sure that all the information I present is as correct as possible. That being said, I reserve the right to disagree with other people’s assessments of the factual accuracy of the information I present and I will exercise my own judgement when deciding what to change and what not to change.
Question: “You spell ancient Greek names differently from how I’m used to seeing them. Why do you spell them like that?”
Most sources of information about ancient history written in English use the Latinized spellings of ancient Greek names. On this website, however, as many readers have already noticed, I normally use direct transliterations of the names from the original Ancient Greek.
In some cases, this may be confusing to readers who are accustomed to the traditional, Latinized spellings. The reason why I have chosen to use the direct transliterations instead of the more traditional spellings is because I desire to more accurately reflect the appearance and pronunciation of ancient Greek names.
In some cases, however, for very well-known, widely recognizable names, I have chosen to use the traditional Latinized spellings. For instance, in some articles, I use the spelling Socrates instead of Sokrates, the spelling Plato instead of Platon, the spelling Aristotle instead of Aristoteles, the spelling Achilles instead of Achilleus, and so on. I have chosen to do this in these cases in effort to avoid making familiar names seem foreign and unrecognizable.
Question: “You use BC/AD dates in your early articles, but BCE/CE dates in your more recent articles. Why did you switch?”
I originally used BC/AD dates because I thought they were more accessible and because, for a long time, I believed that BCE/CE dates were a rather phony attempt to take the Christian Anno Domini dating system and make it superficially “secular” simply by changing the letters.
I believed that this was silly, since the BCE/CE dating system was still based on the supposed date of the birth of Jesus, meaning it wasn’t really any more “secular” than the BC/AD system. I therefore held that, if people wanted a secular dating system, then they should invent an entirely new dating system that isn’t based on the supposed date of Jesus’s birth.
More recently, though, I have had conversations with followers of non-Christian religions, particularly Judaism, who have emphasized to me that the BCE/CE dating system is not supposed to be completely “secular,” but instead is merely supposed to show respect by avoiding explicitly Christian declarations of faith.
They explained to me that, since “BC” stands for “Before Christ” and “AD” stands for Anno Domini, which means “the Year of Our Lord,” anyone who uses these terms is loudly proclaiming that Jesus is the “Christ” and the “Lord.” Both abbreviations are explicit and unambiguous declarations of faith in Christianity.
These abbreviations may not seem like declarations of faith to people who were raised in Christian homes, who are accustomed to hearing titles like “Christ” and “Lord” applied to Jesus all the time. Nonetheless, they are still declarations of faith. Many Jewish people, therefore, believe that it is contrary to the teachings of their religion for them to use the terms “BC” and “AD.” Some followers of other non-Christian religions feel similarly.
At this point, the Christian dating system is used for almost everything and it would be virtually impossible to replace it with a completely new dating system that is genuinely secular, but it is much easier to amend the current system so that everyone can use it by removing the explicit Christian declarations of faith.
This is why I now use the BCE/CE dating system.
Question: “Why have you written so many articles debunking dumb misconceptions and crackpot theories?”
Unfortunately, claims that some people easily recognize as ridiculous are not so easy for others to recognize. As I discuss in great depth in this article from June 2020, polls have repeatedly found that large percentages of Americans believe in all sorts of things that most scholars regard as silly and irrational.
For instance, a survey conducted in 2018 by Chapman University found that roughly 58% of people in the United States agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “places can be haunted by spirits,” 57% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed,” 41% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “aliens have visited Earth in our ancient past,” and 35% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “aliens have come to earth in modern times.”
Furthermore, debunking misconceptions and crackpot theories about ancient history can be educational even for people who never believed in those misconceptions to begin with, because debunking a misconception requires the use of actual historical evidence—evidence that people can learn from.