Tales of Times Forgotten

Popular Stereotypes about Greek People

I recently wrote an article debunking the popular idea that modern Greeks are not true Greeks at all but rather some other people with no relation to the ancient Greeks. This idea is, of course, wrong for all sorts of reasons that I explain in the article. In the course of researching that article, though, I came across all kinds of information about stereotypes surrounding modern Greek people.

I have therefore decided to write this article in which I intend to examine some of the more popular stereotypes about Greeks and assess how true these stereotypes really are, using evidence. Since I am not Greek myself, you can be sure that, if my analysis here is biased for any reason, it isn’t that one.

Are Modern Greeks Descended from the Ancient Greeks?

One thing I’ve discovered from reading questions and answers on Quora is that people are bizarrely obsessed with the question of whether modern Greeks are descended from ancient Greeks. It’s a subject that inevitably sparks a great deal of heated debate, with various non-Greek westerners on one side insisting that modern Greeks are not true Greeks at all while Greek people and various others insist that modern Greeks are truly descendants of the ancient Greeks.

The question of whether modern Greeks are truly descendants of the ancient Greeks has a long, sordid history that goes all the way back to the nineteenth century. I have decided to weigh in on this discussion to give some relevant background information, correct some prevailing false assumptions, and, finally, give what I consider to be a sound answer on the matter.

Carl Sagan Was Really Bad at History

Carl Sagan’s thirteen-episode documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which originally aired on PBS in 1980, is the most watched PBS documentary series in history. The miniseries, which is, broadly speaking, about the history and importance of science, has had a massive influence on both our culture as a whole and on individual people’s lives. Many people say that watching Cosmos growing up was what inspired them to go into STEM.

Unfortunately, while Carl Sagan may have been a brilliant scientist and a great science popularizer, he was an unbelievably terrible historian and, in the show, he gets a boatload of facts about history blatantly wrong. Because Sagan was a scientist with an established reputation, though, many people have assumed that everything he says in the miniseries must be correct and, as a result, these misconceptions have spread and become embedded in popular culture.

Perhaps the most influentially wrong segment in the whole series is a twenty-two-and-a-half-minute segment in the last episode about the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria and the murder of the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia. In this one segment, Sagan manages to promote what seems like roughly half of all the misconceptions about the ancient world that I have ever debunked.

I wrote an article in August 2018 debunking misconceptions about Hypatia and another article in July 2019 debunking misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria. In both of those articles, I have noted that many of the misconceptions I debunk originated from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, but, in those articles, I did not address Carl Sagan’s PBS miniseries directly.

I have therefore decided to undertake the ambitious task of going through the entire segment about Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria and correcting all the inaccuracies I come across. This should give you some impression of how historically accurate Carl Sagan’s documentary really is.

No, Groundhog Day Is Not of Ancient Pagan Origin

As you may or may not know, February 2nd is known as “Groundhog Day” in North America because there is a popular superstition that, if a groundhog comes out of his hole on February 2nd and sees his shadow because it is sunny, he will go back in his hole and there will be six more weeks of winter, but, if he does not see his shadow because it is too cloudy, he will stay out of his hole and winter will be over soon.

Every year, at the site of Gobbler’s Knob in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a widely-publicized ceremony is held in which a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil is brought forward by members of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club dressed in tuxedos and top hats.

The president of the Inner Circle then pretends to listen to Punxsutawney Phil, who allegedly tells him in a language that only the president can understand known as “Groundhogese” whether or not he has seen his shadow. The president of the Inner Circle makes a pronouncement of whether there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter. It’s all a very silly affair and very few people, if any, actually think the groundhog can predict the weather.

Naturally, there are people insisting that Groundhog Day is of ancient pagan origin. This is, of course, entirely wrong; there’s really nothing ancient or pagan about Groundhog Day as we know it today. Nonetheless, people today are obsessed with trying to connect all modern holiday customs back to ancient paganism. People like to believe that the traditions we have today are ancient. In reality, though, most modern holidays customs are products of only the past few centuries.

Why Flaming Arrows Are Kind Of Stupid

When I was in fifth and sixth grade, I played a game with my friends where we pretended we lived in a fantasy world called “Clod.” Most of my friends pretended to be rulers of various fictional countries within this world. One of my friends pretended that he was the king of the elves. Whenever there was a battle, he always made a big deal about how his elven archers shot flaming arrows, which he always said were so much more deadly than regular arrows.

As it turns out, though, flaming arrows were rarely ever used in open combat by pre-modern peoples and the idea of using flaming arrows in open combat is actually kind of stupid. Flaming arrows were a real thing, but they weren’t often used and, when they were used, they weren’t used the way they are normally portrayed in movies and books.

No, Researchers Didn’t Really Reconstruct the Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

In case you haven’t heard, on 23 January 2020, a group of British researchers published a paper in the British scientific journal Scientific Reports claiming that they had reconstructed the voice of an ancient Egyptian man named Nesyamun, who worked as a priest, scribe, and incense-bearer at the temple complex at the site of Karnak in Upper Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses XI (most likely ruled c. 1107– c. 1077 BC). Nesyamun was probably of Nubian descent. He died in around his mid-fifties and, at the time of his death, suffered from severe gum disease.

The researchers used a CT scanner, a 3D printer, a loudspeaker, and computer software to reconstruct what they claim is what it would sound like if Nesyamun were to speak the vowel sound “eh.” Unfortunately, the claim of the researchers that they have reconstructed Nesyamun’s actual voice is highly dubious.

What Was the First Novel?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about when the novel as a literary form developed. Many people think that the novel arose at some point during the Early Modern Period (lasted c. 1450 – c. 1750). Many works dating to this period, such as Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, and Le Morte d’Arthur are often cited as “the first novel.” The popular perception, however, is incorrect.

The novel as a literary form definitely dates at least as far back as the second century BC and probably dates to long before that. Not a single one of the works usually cited as “the first novel” is even close to being old enough to actually be “the first novel.”

The fact is, we don’t know exactly what the first novel was, but, since we have record of works that can only be described as novels dating as far back as at least the second century BC, anything written within the past 2,200 years can’t possibly be “the first novel.”

What Really Happened to the Athena Parthenos?

The Athena Parthenos, a colossal gold and ivory statue of the goddess Athena created between 447 and 438 BC by the renowned ancient Athenian sculptor Pheidias (lived c. 480 – c. 430 BC) that originally stood in the naos of the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis, is one of the most famous of all ancient Greek statues.

Unlike the Venus de Milo, which, as I talk about in this article from September 2019, wasn’t famous in antiquity and is mostly only famous today because of a French propaganda campaign in the nineteenth century, the Athena Parthenos really was famous in antiquity. In fact, it is only famous today because of its ancient reputation, since the statue itself has not survived.

Many people have wondered what happened to the Athena Parthenos, but its ultimate fate is actually far less mysterious than many people have been led to believe. The story of how the Athena Parthenos was destroyed, recreated, and destroyed again is as fascinating as any story from the ancient world.

The Problem with Percy Jackson

The book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, originally published from 2005 to 2009, is one of the most popular series of children’s fantasy novels of the twenty-first century so far. According to the Wikipedia article on it (which may or may not be reliable here since the source it cites is a Fox Business article from 2010 with a dead link), over sixty-nine million copies of books in the series have been sold worldwide.

In case you haven’t read the series, the basic premise is that the Greek gods are real, they live in the United States, and their demigod offspring live among us. According to the series, these demigods have special powers that they have inherited from their parents. The main character of the series is Percy Jackson, the demigod son of Poseidon and a mortal woman. Major supporting characters introduced in the first book include Annabeth Chase (a daughter of Athena), Grover Underwood (a satyr), Luke Castellan (a son of Hermes), and Chiron (a wise centaur).

I first read the series when I was in late elementary school and, at the time, I loved it—although I never quite got as obsessed with it as I did with Harry Potter or The Spiderwick Chronicles (probably because I read it at a significantly older age). As I grew older, though, there was something about the series that really started to bother me. I was in around seventh grade when I really started to notice it and, ever since then, it is something that I have found very disturbing about the series and the message that it sends.

This article will be just as much an account of my personal experience with the books and how they have affected me, as well as an assessment of them and a reflection on how my sentiments towards them have changed over the years.

How Did Greek Philosophers Support Themselves?

A lot of people have wondered how on Earth Greek philosophers made their living. It is hard for a person to earn a livable wage as a professional “philosopher” in the modern age and it would have been even more difficult in classical Greece, since there were no universities as we would think of them at that time that could hire philosophers.

As it turns out, though, most ancient Greek philosophers did not make their money from philosophy. Many of them were from wealthy families and therefore didn’t need to work. Many of them also had wealthy patrons who paid for their expenses. Other philosophers found other ways to survive, which included working day jobs, starting cults, and even literally living off the streets through begging.