Ancient Greece Archives - Page 14 of 18 - Tales of Times Forgotten

What Was Really in the Library of Alexandria?

It is no secret that I spend a lot of time debunking popular misconceptions about the Library of Alexandria. I do this because modern people are absolutely obsessed with the Library of Alexandria and all the amazing documents they believe it must have contained. Today I’m going to revisit the Library of Alexandria yet again to debunk some ideas about what was in it.

Lots of people like to imagine that the Library of Alexandria was filled with amazing scientific information that has been lost. They like to imagine that it could have housed all sorts of breathtaking secrets about the universe that even modern scientists might not know. These ideas, though, are wrong.

I’ve addressed this subject before, but today I want to address it in-depth, debunking some specific claims about the Library of Alexandria’s contents and bringing people’s expectations more down to Earth.

How Did People in Ancient Times Survive without Central Heating?

I’ve come across a large number of questions on Quora asking how people in ancient times managed to survive during the winter without modern central heating. It seems that many people are just outright baffled by the very idea of people living through the cold of winter without central heating.

The answer to the question of how people survived is fairly straightforward, although there are a few surprises. For instance, some people may not have known this, but there are still people living in relatively cold environments today without central heating. Also, even more surprisingly, some wealthy aristocrats in ancient Rome actually did have a kind of early form of central heating system in their villas.

Is Christianity a Mystery Cult?

Over the years, Christianity has often been compared to the mystery religions of ancient Greece and Rome, both by Christians wishing to emphasize the esoteric nature of their religion and by opponents of Christianity who claim that the resemblance between Christianity and mystery religions of antiquity proves that Christianity is not of divine origin.

Christianity certainly has many important features in common with Greco-Roman mystery religions, but there are some crucial differences between Christianity and mystery religions that really set Christianity apart. Perhaps the most notable difference between Christianity and the mystery religions is Christianity’s attitude towards proselytism.

Interestingly, it does seem that some mystery cult-like tendencies did come to dominate Christianity in late antiquity. Nonetheless, Christianity itself is not inherently a mystery religion and I don’t think anyone could accurately describe contemporary Christianity as a mystery cult.

How Many Sexual Partners Was It Common for People to Have in Ancient Greece?

We all know that modern people didn’t invent sex. Consequently, some people have wondered how many sexual partners it was common for people in ancient and medieval times to have within their lifetimes.

This is a hard question to answer because the number of sexual partners that a person in ancient or medieval times had within their lifetime depended on a wide array of factors, which include the person’s personality, gender, and economic status, as well as the time and place in which the person happened to live.

Furthermore, we don’t really have enough data to say exactly what the “average” number of sexual partners for a person in the pre-modern world was. Most of our surviving evidence comes from sources written by social elites. This makes it even harder to know exactly how many sexual partners it was common for ordinary people to have.

Because there is such drastic variance across cultures, for this article, I will be focusing on what we know about the number of sexual partners people in ancient Greece could be expected to have. Many of the things I am about to say, though, can be applied in a general sense to other ancient cultures as well.

No, Aristotle Is Not Telling You to Unleash Your Inner Rage

Most people today believe that the word catharsis refers to the necessary release of negative emotions and destructive impulses for the sake of “purging” oneself of those emotions and impulses. Many people see this “purging” of negative emotions—usually specifically anger—as healthy or even necessary. This idea of catharsis as emotional purging is usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BC).

Psychological experiments, however, have shown that unleashing your anger does not cause that anger to go away. In fact, actually has a tendency to make people even more angry than they were originally. Furthermore, while Aristotle did use the Greek word κάθαρσις (kátharsis) in his Poetics, he certainly didn’t use that word to mean what many people today think he meant by it.

Did Hades Abduct Persephone or Did She Go with Him Willingly?

In many sanitized modern adaptations of the story of Hades and Persephone, Persephone is portrayed as going with Hades to the Underworld willingly. This is the version of the story that is found in many books about Greek mythology intended for children and in the award-winning music Hadestown. This is not, however, how the story is portrayed in ancient Greek sources.

The ancient Greek and Roman accounts of Persephone universally agree that Hades abducted Persephone against her will and raped her. Both literary and artistic representations of the event unambiguously portray it as a forcible abduction. Ancient Greek and Roman poems give graphic descriptions of Persephone being brutally snatched and carried off, crying and screaming in desperation.

I don’t necessarily see the modern sanitization of the story of Hades and Persephone as a problem strictly speaking, but I do think that it is important to keep in mind that the versions of the story that were told in ancient times were much darker than the versions many people are telling today.

What Do Conservatives Really Mean When They Talk about “Western Civilization”?

The concept of “western civilization” has become something of a major political talking point among conservatives in the United States in recent years. Conservative commentators claim that western civilization is a glorious, wonderful thing that progressives are working tirelessly to destroy and conservatives are fighting honorably to protect.

In this article, I intend to take a deep dive into what conservatives say about “western civilization.” I’m going to examine their claims and assess how accurate these claims are. I’ll look at the things conservatives say make western civilization “unique” and “special” and see how “unique” and “special” these things really are. In the end, we will all see together what exactly “western civilization” really is.

Modern Stereotypes about Ancient Civilizations

I’ve been debunking popular misconceptions about ancient civilizations online for a while now. One thing I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of the misconceptions I’ve debunked tend to play into a some very specific stereotypes about what certain ancient civilizations were supposedly like.

It is clear that most people who haven’t studied ancient history think of ancient civilizations in terms of stereotypes. Thus, lots of people (and not always the same people) imagine the Egyptians as mystics with secret knowledge; the Greeks as intelligent, progressive, scientific-minded lovers of freedom; the Romans as perpetually debauched, horny, and violent; and early Christians as fanatical, ignorant, obscurantist destroyers of civilization.

All of these stereotypes are wrong to some extent. Most of them are wildly inaccurate. In this article I want to look at these stereotypes, where they come from, and some of the smaller misconceptions that feed into them.

The Shocking True Origin of the Name “Philadelphia”

You’ve all been taught the name Philadelphia comes from Greek meaning “City of Brotherly Love.” That’s mostly true. What you haven’t been taught is the long, fascinating history behind the name. As it turns out, the name Philadelphia ultimately comes from a nickname given to an ancient Greek ruler of Egypt who gained notoriety for marrying his own full sister. The “brotherly love” in the name originally referred to literal incest.

Are Modern Greeks Descended from the Ancient Greeks?

One thing I’ve discovered from reading questions and answers on Quora is that people are bizarrely obsessed with the question of whether modern Greeks are descended from ancient Greeks. It’s a subject that inevitably sparks a great deal of heated debate, with various non-Greek westerners on one side insisting that modern Greeks are not true Greeks at all while Greek people and various others insist that modern Greeks are truly descendants of the ancient Greeks.

The question of whether modern Greeks are truly descendants of the ancient Greeks has a long, sordid history that goes all the way back to the nineteenth century. I have decided to weigh in on this discussion to give some relevant background information, correct some prevailing false assumptions, and, finally, give what I consider to be a sound answer on the matter.