Tales of Times Forgotten

The Story of Saint Patrick

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.

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Greek Writers Quoted in the New Testament

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:

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Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Five: Pulling Pranks on Demokritos

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.
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No, Julius Caesar Was Not Born by Cesarean Section

Everyone knows that a cesarean section, also known as a “C-section,” is when a child is removed from the uterus via surgery rather than by the natural birthing process. The name of the procedure, however, is misleading. Although the term cesarean section most likely does indeed come from the name of the famous ancient Roman general and dictator Gaius Julius Caesar (lived 100 – 44 BC), this is not because Julius Caesar was actually born by cesarean section, but rather because of a later legend with no factual basis claiming that he was.

Misunderstood Myths, Part Five: The Entire Concept of “Classical Mythology” in General

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.

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Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Four: The Boarded-Up Bathhouse

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.

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Surprise! Classical Sculptures Were Actually Brightly Painted!

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.

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No, Atlas Did Not Hold the Earth on His Shoulders

The image of the Titan Atlas holding the Earth on his shoulders is an iconic one that has inspired countless writers, thinkers, and artists. It is also a modern notion with no basis whatsoever in any ancient Greek texts. In actual ancient Greek mythology, Atlas does not, in fact, hold the Earth on his shoulders, but rather the sky. The misconception that the ancient Greeks imagined Atlas as holding the Earth on his shoulders arose as a result of the misinterpretation of classical representations of Atlas. In this article, I intend to set the record straight by examining how the ancient Greeks really envisioned Atlas and explaining how the misconception about him holding up the Earth arose.

Ancient Greek Ghost Stories, Part Three: How the Ancient Greeks Invented the Vampire Romance Story

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.

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Cats and Weasels

Everyone knows that, in ancient times, the Egyptians worshipped cats, but across the Mediterranean over in Europe, the situation was much different. During the Archaic Period (lasted c. 800 – c. 510 BC), housecats seem to have been almost completely absent from the Greek world; they do not appear in Greek art and not referenced in works of Greek literature from this time period.

During the Classical Period (lasted c. 510 – c. 323 BC), housecats seem to have been gradually introduced to Greece and southern Italy from Egypt and the Near East, but they seem to have been seen as strange, exotic pets—in the same way that keeping a parrot as a pet might be seen as unusual today.

Eventually, starting during the Hellenistic Period (lasted c. 323 – c. 31 BC) and continuing into the Roman Period, housecats as pets gradually became more and more common in the Greco-Roman world. Curiously, though, weasels seem to have been much more commonly kept as pets in ancient Greece than cats and the words for “cat” and “weasel” seem to often been conflated.