Hello! My name is Spencer McDaniel and I am the author of this blog. I first became interested in Greek mythology while I was in elementary school. As I grew a bit older, I became interested in reading some of the ancient sources for the stories. When I was in seventh grade, I read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the poems of Hesiodos of Askre, and Sophokles’s “Theban Trilogy” for the first time. I became increasingly fascinated with ancient Greece and started reading more about ancient Greek history and culture. From there, I became fascinated with the ancient world in general.
I began writing this blog in November 2016 when I was still a junior in high school. My original intention when I started the blog was mostly for it to be a place where I could retell short, interesting anecdotes that I had come across in my studies. Since then, however, the blog has evolved into a platform for much more in-depth articles dealing with complex topics related to ancient history.
I began editing articles about ancient history on Wikipedia under the username “Katolophyromai” in December 2016. During my time as an editor at Wikipedia, I substantially rewrote and brought twenty-seven articles up to “Good Article” status and one article up to “Featured List” status. I also contributed significantly to many other articles, including several other articles that I helped other users bring up to “Good Article” status.
I graduated from high school in May 2018 and went on to pursue my bachelor’s degree at Indiana University Bloomington. After I entered university, I stopped editing Wikipedia as much, but, in October 2018, I began writing answers on the question-and-answer site Quora. I became a very popular answerer of questions related to ancient history on that platform and remained so throughout my time as an undergraduate, eventually accruing over twenty-six thousand followers.
I graduated from IU Bloomington on 7 May 2022 with high distinction with a BA in history and classical studies (Ancient Greek and Latin languages), with departmental honors in history. I wrote my senior honors thesis in history about the Galloi (i.e., mendicant self-castrated devotees of the Phrygian mother goddess Kybele) and their religious practices in Hellenistic Asia Minor in the third and second centuries BCE.
I quit writing on Quora in June 2022, for reasons I discuss in this post, but I am still regularly making new posts here on my blog and writing answers in r/AskHistorians. In August 2022, I became a grad student in the MA program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Brandeis University.