The story of Cinderella is a classic European folk tale that almost everyone in the western world has known since childhood. Most people here in the United States were first introduced to the story through the classic Walt Disney animated film Cinderella (1950), which was based on a French version of the story published in 1697 by the French writer Charles Perrault in his book Histoires ou contes du temps passé (“Stories of Past Times with Morals”). The story of Cinderella itself, however, is far, far older than Perrault. In fact, the oldest known version of the story of Cinderella was actually first recorded by a Greek writer in Hellenistic Egypt during the early first century AD.
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The Man Who Wrote Too Much: Didymos Chalkenteros
During the first century A.D. there was a scholar at the library of Alexandria named Didymos. Didymos was a prolific writer. According to Wise Men at Dinner by Athenaios, Didymos wrote over 4,000 books. According to On the Education of the Orator by Marcus Fabius Quintillianus, Didymos wrote more treatises than any other person had ever written before. As a result of his intense stamina for writing, Didymos became known as “Χαλκέντερος,” which means “The Bronze-Gutted.”
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The Bizarre Origins of the Word Idiot
The 2016 election cycle in the United States has been one of the most bitter and divisive in recent memory. Both of the candidates—Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) and Donald J. Trump (R)—are regarded as so thoroughly unlikeable in every way that many people are outright refusing to vote for either of them. If you decide not to vote in this election, though, you are an idiot. I do not necessarily mean you are unintelligent or even ignorant for that matter; I merely mean that you are an idiot.