Ancient Greece Archives - Page 8 of 18 - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, Archaeologists Have Not Found the Trojan Horse

On 10 August 2021, the website Greek Reporter published an article written by a contributor named Philip Chrysopoulos titled “Archaeologists Claim They’ve Discovered the Trojan Horse in Turkey.” The article claims that archaeologists have discovered the remains of a wooden structure inside the ancient city of Troy that they think is the actual Trojan horse. On the same day, The Jerusalem Post copied Greek Reporter’s story, publishing their own article titled “Did archaeologists find the Trojan horse?” that cites the Greek Reporter article as its only source.

The problem is that the whole story is a steaming pile of horse manure. The Greek Reporter article contains obvious signs that it is a deliberate hoax written in order to attract views in order to drive up ad revenues. By publishing this ridiculous, easily debunked story, Greek Reporter and The Jerusalem Post are both showing that, at the very best, they do not conduct even the most basic fact-checking or source verification and that they are not trustworthy news sites.

Dark Academia, the “Western Canon,” and the Decline of the Humanities

In around mid-July, I found out that there is apparently a huge internet “aesthetic” movement called “dark academia” that centers around a highly romanticized impression of what humanities scholars and students—especially those in the fields of classics, English, history, and philosophy—dressed and lived like in the twentieth century. Aspects of the aesthetic include wearing old-fashioned, dark-colored, stereotypically “academic” clothing and appreciating “classic” literature, art, and music.

For those who aren’t already aware, I am currently about to enter my senior year at Indiana University Bloomington double-majoring in history and classical studies (i.e., Ancient Greek and Latin), with honors in history. My current plan is to apply to graduate programs in ancient history later this year. Even though I don’t deliberately dress in a dark academia style and I don’t identify with the aesthetic in any particular way, being a humanities student does make me feel like I have a connection to it.

I was so struck by my surprise discovery of dark academia’s apparent popularity that I’ve spent a good part of the past two weeks researching it and its history. Naturally, I have a lot of thoughts, especially about how the current popularity of the aesthetic seems to be at least in part a reaction to the slow ongoing decline of the academic humanities.

Alluring Anecdotes about the Olympic Games

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo are now officially underway, having been delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have absolutely no interest in sports and, in all likelihood, I will not watch any part of the ongoing Olympics. Nonetheless, I do know a little bit about Olympic history, due to my intense study of ancient Greece and Rome and, on account of the occasion, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite anecdotes about Olympic history.

The first is a legend about why ancient Olympic athletes were required to compete naked, the second is about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to attend the Olympic Games, the third is about how women were sometimes able to compete in the ancient Olympic Games due to a loophole, and the fourth is about how the modern Olympic Games at one point included competitions for literature and the arts.

Ancient Roman Masturbation

For the past four years, a photograph of a plaster cast of an ancient Roman man who died in the city of Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE has been circulating online with the claim that he died while masturbating, since his right hand happens to be positioned near his groin in a masturbation-like pose. Historically speaking, it is highly unlikely that this particular man really died while masturbating. The position of his hand is most likely a result of the muscle contractions resulting from the excruciating heat shock that killed him, rather than the result of anything he was doing before he was killed.

Nonetheless, there is a wealth of fascinating historical and archaeological evidence for both male and female masturbation in ancient Rome, including in the city of Pompeii. Needless to say, the following article contains discussion of evidence that is not suitable for children.

Pamphile of Epidauros: A Female Ancient Greek Historian

Nearly all the historical writings that have survived from ancient Greece and Rome were written by men. Women’s voices in the historical record are few and far between. We do, however, know that there was, in fact, an extraordinarily prolific female ancient Greek historian named Pamphile of Epidauros, who lived in Greece in around the middle of the first century CE, when Greece was ruled by the Roman Empire.

Pamphile is known to have written a lengthy compilation of interesting historical anecdotes derived from various sources titled Historical Commentaries, an epitome of the writings of the historian Ktesias of Knidos (fl. c. 400 BCE), a work titled On Controversies that seems to have been perhaps a collection of essays on controversial topics, and a work titled On Sexual Pleasures, which seems to have been a sex manual. Sadly, everything or almost everything she wrote has been lost.

Pamphile is a truly monumental figure in the history of Greek historiography, not only because she is the only female ancient Greek historian about whom we have any significant information, but also because she seems to have been an especially important author in the development of the genre of “miscellaneous history,” which focused on retelling interesting anecdotes from earlier authors and became very popular in the Roman Empire during the second and third centuries CE.

Ancient Greek Men Were Not All Buff

One of the most common misconceptions I have encountered about the ancient Greeks is the notion that ancient Greek men were all incredibly buff, muscle-bound bodybuilders. This misconception seems to arise from the naïve assumption that ancient Greek statues depict how average ancient Greek men really looked, perhaps also influenced by the similarly naïve assumption that the 2007 epic fantasy action film 300, written and directed by Zack Snyder, is a historically accurate depiction of ancient Greece.

The reality is that there was never a time when the majority of Greek men really looked like the physical specimens portrayed in Archaic and Classical Greek sculptures. These sculptures represent what upper-class Greek people regarded as physically ideal, not what the average Greek person actually looked like.

Why Did the Patriarchal Greeks and Romans Worship Such Powerful Goddesses?

It is widely known that the ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped many powerful goddesses, whom they held in extremely high regard. At the same time, it is also widely known that ancient Greek and Roman societies were deeply patriarchal. Misogyny and machismo were rampant among men of all social classes. Women’s lives were, in general, strictly socially controlled and women were excluded from holding most official positions of power.

As a result of this, one of the most common questions people have asked me about classical mythology is how the Greeks and Romans were able to accommodate such powerful goddesses within their respective pantheons while simultaneously denigrating human women. In this essay, I will try to answer this question to the best of my ability. I will give several different plausible explanations in the hope that some of them, or the combination of all of them, may be satisfactory.

Why Is Latin Considered a “Dead Language”?

When I tell someone that I’m studying Ancient Greek and Latin, it is very common for the person with whom I am speaking to react with surprise at the fact that it is even possible to study Latin. They often say things like, “I thought Latin was a dead language!” with the implication that they thought nobody knew how to speak or even read Latin and it was impossible for anybody to learn. I most commonly receive this reaction from people who are of my own generation, who have had little exposure to Latin.

These reactions clearly stem from a misunderstanding of what linguists and classicists mean when they say that Latin is a “dead language.” In this article, I would like to address what the term “dead language” really means, why it is applied to Latin, and why the use of this descriptor in many ways masks a more complicated reality.

A DNA Test Cannot Tell You Your Ancient Ancestors

For many years now, companies like Ancestry and 23andMe have been selling DNA tests that they claim can tell people where their ancestors came from. Their tests have become quite popular, despite the fact that they often present results in misleading ways that appeal to popular racist ideas about “blood quantum.” Now, some companies are trying to convince people that they can use DNA tests to trace a modern person’s genetic ancestry back to specific ancient cultures.

One such company calls itself “My True Ancestry.” This company does not conduct DNA tests of its own, but allows users to upload their DNA test results from other companies so that their software can automatically compare their genomes to those sequenced from ancient remains. The software then generates a pie chart showing what percentage of a person’s DNA supposedly comes from each ancient culture. This company, however, and others like it, are blatantly misrepresenting both how genetics works and what ancient populations were like.

Sparta Was Not a Paradise for Women

It is extremely common for people who write about ancient history on the internet to claim that ancient Sparta was, by ancient Greek standards, a paradise for women. I’m frankly sick and tired of this narrative because it is, in many ways, deeply misinformed. It is, of course, dangerous to overgeneralize, but I would argue that a randomly selected woman of unspecified social status in Athens would actually be far more likely to be happy than a similarly selected woman in Sparta.

It’s true that Spartiate women (i.e., women who belonged to the Spartan citizen class) generally had more freedom and privileges than women of the citizen class in most other Greek poleis (i.e., city-states). Nonetheless, life for Spartiate women wasn’t nearly as good as it is often made to sound. Their rights were still severely limited and the rights that Spartiate women had that women in other Greek poleis lacked were actually fairly normal for women in other ancient civilizations, such as Egypt and Rome.

Furthermore, the popular discourse around Sparta almost always completely omits mention of the fact that the overwhelming majority of all women in Sparta were enslaved helots, for whom life was almost certainly an absolute living Hell. While all Greek poleis had enslaved people, in Sparta, they made up a vastly larger share of the overall population than in any other polis and they were notoriously ill-treated, even by ancient Greek standards. Helot women were forced to do an overwhelming amount of manual labor, they lived in constant fear of being whipped or murdered by the krypteia, they were kept perpetually starving and malnourished, people they loved were constantly dying, and many of them were regularly being raped.