In classical literature, we often stumble across unusual or amusing anecdotes. Sometimes, however, we find stories that are downright bizarre. For instance, in his Natural History 9.4.9-11, Pliny the Elder describes a bizarre assortment of otherworldly sightings of supernatural sea creatures, including mermaids, mermen, and gigantic sea monsters.
The Eclipse of Thales and the Battle of Halys
Today everyone was excited about the total solar eclipse (near-total in some places) that occurred this afternoon over the continental United States. We all knew that the eclipse was going to happen decades in advance due to modern astronomical calculations, but, in ancient times, there was no sound way of predicting when an eclipse would occur… until Thales of Miletos came along.
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Ovid’s Worst Lines
In his Controversiae 2.2.12, the Roman writer Seneca the Elder tells the story of how the poet Ovid once told all his friends that each of them could choose three lines they disliked from any of his poems, promising that, whichever lines they chose, he would remove.
Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Six: The Hero of Temesa
In Book Six of The Guide to Greece, the ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias tells the story of the ghost of a stoned rapist who terrorized the city of Temesa until it was driven out by the Olympic boxer Euthymos.
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Betsy Ross Did Not Design the First American Flag
Everyone has heard the beautiful, heart-warming tale of how, in 1776, General George Washington, George Ross, and Robert Morris personally visited the humble Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross and showed her a rough sketch for the first flag of the United States of America, to which she made a few minor alterations before sewing it. It is a good story, which is why we tell it. Unfortunately, it is also completely apocryphal; there is no solid historical evidence linking Betsy Ross to the first American flag aside from a highly implausible story told by her grandson nearly a century later.
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The Pledge of Allegiance Was Actually Written by a Socialist
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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Xanthippe: The Bizarre, Yet Ever-Worsening State of Sokrates’s Marriage
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.
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The Ancient Greek Rip Van Winkle
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.
Brutal Words: The Unique Origins of Words Associated With Cruelty
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.
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The Most Depressing Book Ever Written: Death by Starvation by Hegesias of Kyrene
When they hear the words “most depressing book ever written,” most people probably think of a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky or Émile Zola. While works by these writers are well-known for being depressing, just wait until you hear about a book written by the early third-century BC Greek Cyrenaic philosopher Hegesias of Kyrene. The book was called Death by Starvation or The Death-Persuader. According to the Roman orator Cicero (lived 106 – 43 BC), the entire book was essentially an argument for why everyone should just give up on life and kill themselves.
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