Tales of Times Forgotten

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.

Yes, Kratos Is a Real Deity in Greek Mythology

I have never played any of the games in the video game series God of War. I don’t really have any interest in video games and, even if I did have an interest in them, I would never have time to play them. Nonetheless, as a Hellenist, I like to pay attention to how Greek mythology is portrayed in modern popular culture and I find it interesting that Kratos, the main character in the God of War series, is actually very loosely based on a real figure in Greek mythology.

In Greek mythology, Kratos is the divine personification of strength, the son of the Titan Pallas and the Okeanid nymphe Styx. Ironically, in ancient Greek sources, Kratos is portrayed as a dumb, overly violent thug who is unquestioningly loyal to Zeus and whose job is to enforce Zeus’s authority over all the other deities; whereas I’ve read that, in the video game series God of War, Kratos is apparently portrayed as a renegade demigod who kills all the major deities in the Greek pantheon, including Zeus.

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.

How Deadly Is COVID-19 Compared to Other Diseases?

Many people are saying that COVID-19, the new strain of coronavirus that is now spreading throughout the world, is no deadlier than the common influenza and that people are panicking over nothing. The Trump administration in particular has been promoting the narrative that COVID-19 is no deadlier than the common influenza and that it poses no serious threat.

This, however, incorrect; COVID-19 is, in fact, many times deadlier than the seasonal influenza and it is important that the virus be contained. It is true that the vast majority of people who contract COVID-19 do survive. Nonetheless, if COVID-19 is not successfully contained and no vaccine or cure is developed, it could still potentially kill tens of millions of people within the next year or two, many more people than the influenza normally kills in the same amount of time.

Did Hades Abduct Persephone or Did She Go with Him Willingly?

In many sanitized modern adaptations of the story of Hades and Persephone, Persephone is portrayed as going with Hades to the Underworld willingly. This is the version of the story that is found in many books about Greek mythology intended for children and in the award-winning music Hadestown. This is not, however, how the story is portrayed in ancient Greek sources.

The ancient Greek and Roman accounts of Persephone universally agree that Hades abducted Persephone against her will and raped her. Both literary and artistic representations of the event unambiguously portray it as a forcible abduction. Ancient Greek and Roman poems give graphic descriptions of Persephone being brutally snatched and carried off, crying and screaming in desperation.

I don’t necessarily see the modern sanitization of the story of Hades and Persephone as a problem strictly speaking, but I do think that it is important to keep in mind that the versions of the story that were told in ancient times were much darker than the versions many people are telling today.

No, There Isn’t a Conspiracy to “Hide the Truth” about Ancient History

One of the most annoying and pervasive beliefs I have encountered in my time on the internet is the belief that there is a huge conspiracy among scholars or among government agents to “hide the truth” about ancient history. This strange conviction that many people seem to share forms the basis for countless conspiracy theories of all different varieties.

For instance, I’ve seen countless people online claiming that academics or the United States government are secretly hiding evidence that aliens really visited Earth in ancient times or evidence for the existence of unknown lost civilizations. Funnily enough, no one actually seems to agree on exactly what kind of “truth” that governments and scholars are hiding; the only thing they all agree on is that, somehow or another, they’re hiding something and its always something big.

Unfortunately, for the conspiracy theorists, I’m going to have to burst their bubble; not only are historians and governments not “hiding the truth” about ancient history, but they actually have every motivation to not hide it.