Tales of Times Forgotten

March, as most of you probably already know, is Women’s History Month. In honor of this month, I thought I would write a series of articles about famous women from the ancient world. Unfortunately, this idea has been greatly hindered by the extreme rarity of such women. In fact, the ancient world was so overwhelmingly male-dominated that only a tiny handful of women’s names have even been recorded. Fortunately, however, there are a few famous women from the ancient world whose achievements truly stand out; finding them is just more difficult. Many of these famous ancient women were poets since poetry-writing was one of the few career options that was open to them.

In fact, the very first poet whose name has been recorded was actually a woman. Her name was Enheduanna and she was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad.

Continue reading “Enheduanna: The Earliest Poet Whose Name Is Recorded”

Every year on March 17, people all across the United States celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, but only a few people actually know who Saint Patrick really was.

The historical Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary who lived during the middle part of the fifth century A.D. Most early saints do not have any extant writings. Consequently, all information about these saints can only come from records written by others, who sometimes lived much later than the saint him or herself. This, however, is not the case with Saint Patrick. Two documents written by Patrick himself have survived to the present day. The first of these documents is a brief autobiography entitled Confession. The second is a letter written to the soldiers of Coroticus. These sources provide us with a great deal of firsthand information about Saint Patrick’s life.

Continue reading “The Story of Saint Patrick”

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.

Continue reading “Misunderstood Myths, Part Five: The Entire Concept 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.

Continue reading “Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Three: How the Ancient Greeks Invented the Vampire Romance Story”