ancient religions Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Tales of Times Forgotten

The Ghost of Achilles on Snake Island

By this point, I imagine that most of my readers have probably already heard that, on 24 February 2022, the first day of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, a pair of heavily armed Russian warships attacked Snake Island, a small Ukrainian island in the western Black Sea that was protected at the time by only thirteen Ukrainian border guards.

One of the Russian warships ordered the Ukrainian border guards to surrender and one of the Ukrainians replied: “Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй,” which means “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” This reply has become famous around the world and has widely become seen as emblematic of Ukrainian defiance. It was initially reported that the border guards were all killed, but the Ukrainian military has now publicly confirmed in a post on Facebook that they are actually “alive and well” in Russian captivity.

One thing that many of my readers may not know is that Snake Island—the exact same island where all the events I have described above took place—was known to the Greeks in ancient times as Λευκή (Leukḗ), which means “White Island.” This island is prominent in Greek literature, mythology, and folklore, chiefly because the Greeks believed that Achilles’s mother, the immortal goddess Thetis, transposed his mortal remains, along with those of Patroklos, and interred them in a hero shrine on this island, making it their final resting place.

Several classicists have already written posts about Snake Island’s classical connections, including Mateusz Stróżyński in the online open-access journal Antigone, Peter Gainsford on his blog Kiwi Hellenist, and Christopher Stedman Parmenter on the Society for Classical Studies blog. All of these posts, though, overlook what are, in my personal opinion, the most fascinating stories about the island, which are told by the Greek sophist Philostratos of Athens (lived c. 170 – c. 250 CE) in his dialogue Heroïkos, chapters 54–57. According to Philostratos, the ghosts of Achilles and Helene of Sparta haunt the island together as lovers. (Yes, you read that right; I said Helene, not Patroklos.) The stories he tells about their hauntings on the island are simultaneously captivating and bizarre.

How Were Eunuchs Perceived in the Ancient Mediterranean World?

Eunuchs in the ancient world have become something of a major topic of interest for me over the past few years. The perception of eunuchs in various cultures throughout history has varied drastically, depending on the culture, the time period, and the kind of eunuch in question. In this post, I will describe the perception of eunuchs in the ancient Mediterranean world, which is my area of historical specialization.

In general, in the ancient Mediterranean world, eunuchs were heavily socially marginalized. They were often of enslaved status and, because of their castration, they were commonly seen as no longer men, but rather lesser, inferior creatures. Eunuchs, women, and children were commonly seen as belonging to the same essential category and eunuchs were often seen as more similar to women than to non-castrated men. In the highly misogynistic ancient world, this made them seen as inferior and, in some cases, even outright disgusting and debased.

No, Ares Was Not the Patron God of Sparta

Many people have gotten the impression that, in ancient Greece, Ares was the patron god of Sparta in the same way that Athena was the patron goddess of Athens. This impression, however, is not rooted in any kind of solid historical evidence, but rather solely in the fact that modern people popularly associate Ares and Sparta with many of the same general sorts of things, such as warfare, bloodshed, masculinity, unstoppable fighting abilities, et cetera. To modern observers, Ares seems to embody the Spartan ethos so perfectly that people simply assume without concrete evidence that the Spartans must have adored him.

The truth, though, is that Ares was not the patron god of Sparta in any sense. As one of the Twelve Olympians, he was certainly a significant deity in both Athens and Sparta, but, in both poleis, he was still relatively minor compared to other deities who were far more prominent. Indeed, ironically, Athena actually seems to have had a much more developed cult presence in Sparta than Ares.

Why Is the Parthenon So Famous?

The most famous building in Greece today is almost certainly the Parthenon, a spectacular temple to the Greek goddess Athena that towers atop the Athenian Akropolis and is almost universally admired for being supposedly the most “perfect” and “timeless” work of ancient Greek architecture. Some people may be surprised to learn, though, that this was not always the case.

The Parthenon did not immediately become the most famous and admired Greek temple as soon as it was built. It was certainly seen as an important temple in antiquity—one especially notable for its size, its prominent location, and its extraordinary chryselephantine cult statue of Athena, crafted by the master sculptor Pheidias. Its present-day status as the most famous of all Greek buildings, though, is the result of the events and ideological movements of the past 2,400 years of history. If post-classical history had gone differently, the Parthenon’s status might have gone to a different temple.

Did Ancient People Really Think That Gods People Didn’t Believe in Would “Fade”?

The idea that gods derive their power from people believing in them and worshipping them and that gods whom people stop believing in and worshipping will “fade” or possibly even die out pops up fairly frequently in modern popular culture. Most notably, it forms a major part of the premise for Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel American Gods (originally published in 2001 by William Morrow in the United States and Headline the U.K.) and the television series of the same name based on it (originally released on the premium cable network Starz from 2017 through 2021).

Some people have wondered, though: Does this idea have any kind of basis in ancient sources? Did ancient people really believe that their deities drew their powers from people worshipping them? As it turns out, although the version of the idea that is best known today through American Gods and other works is utterly contrary to how ancient people normally thought about their deities, similar ideas about deities being, to some degree, dependent on worship, do crop up in ancient literature.

No, Santa Claus Is Not Inspired by Odin

I’ve spent a lot of time debunking the perennially popular misconception that modern Anglophone Christmas customs are of ancient “pagan” origin. My most thorough article on the subject remains this one I originally posted two years ago. One of the more popular claims associated with this misconception is that Santa Claus is actually somehow inspired by the “pagan” Norse god Óðinn, who is closely associated with wisdom, war, death, and the runic alphabet. I already debunked this claim in this article I posted two years ago about the history of Santa Claus, which I highly recommend reading, but I did so only briefly and I feel that this notion is so common that it deserves a more thorough rebuttal.

Jackson Crawford, who has a PhD in Old Norse studies, spent many years teaching the subject at various universities, and is now a professional public educator on the subject, posted a video on his YouTube channel last year explaining why Óðinn is not Santa Claus. Crawford’s video is excellent, but it is, for the most part, merely a simple comparison of Óðinn and Santa Claus and it does not take into account the history of Santa Claus. In this article, I intend to give this misconception the proper, in-depth refutation it deserves—one that fully takes into account Santa Claus’s complicated history.

No, “Xmas” Was Not Invented to Advance a Secularist Agenda

We are now well into the month of December. This obviously means that there are already people going around promoting nonsense assertions that twenty-first-century Anglophone Christmas traditions are of ancient “pagan” origin. (I already wrote an article back in December 2019, in which I thoroughly refute the most common “Christmas-is-secretly-pagan” arguments and I’ve addressed some of the other arguments in various other articles.) The time of year also, however, means that there are tons of conservative Christians promoting absurd conspiracy theories that evil leftists are staging some kind of “War on Christmas.”

One aspect of this whole conspiracy theory about the supposed “War on Christmas” is the misconception that the name Xmas was invented by atheists as part of a secularist attempt to remove Christ from Christmas and turn it into a secular holiday. The assumption is that the “X” represents an attempt to literally x-out the word “Christ.” Because of this misconception, some Christians regard the name “Xmas” as downright blasphemous. In reality, the name Xmas was not invented by atheists at all; it is, in fact, merely a harmless abbreviation that was originally invented by Christians and has been in continuous use in various forms for nearly five hundred years.

Were Ancient Civilizations Conservative or Liberal?

I have repeatedly encountered questions on Quora asking whether ancient civilizations were “liberal” or “conservative,” so I thought I would write an in-depth response to those sorts of questions here. I think these questions arise from people perceiving what seems like a fundamental paradox: we revere ancient civilizations for things people generally see as progressive, such as technological advancements and the invention of democracy, while, at the same time, it is widely known that basically all ancient societies had slavery, oppressed women to some degree or another, and were often imperialistic, xenophobic, and culturally chauvinistic.

It’s true that ancient civilizations were generally very conservative in the sense that they tended to value traditions very highly, they were usually culturally resistant to change, and people in those civilizations rarely challenged long-established cultural assumptions and social institutions. For instance, as far as we have evidence, few people in the ancient world ever challenged the idea that men are naturally superior to women or the idea that slavery is normal and morally acceptable.

At the same time, though, it would be misleading to describe ancient civilizations as “conservative” or “liberal” without careful clarification because, among individual people in the ancient world, there was tremendous ideological diversity. Furthermore, the normative values of ancient civilizations were often very different from the values of both contemporary people who call themselves conservatives and contemporary people who call themselves liberals.

Ganymedes: The Adolescent Boy Zeus Abducted and Raped

The ancient Greeks told many stories about their god Zeus raping mortal adolescent girls, often shape-shifting into various animal and human forms in order to do so. Just to name a few examples, he is said to have abducted the Phoenician princess Europe in the form of a bull and raped her, raped the Aitolian princess Leda in the form of a swan, raped the Boiotian princess Antiope in the form of a satyr, raped the Argive princess Danaë in the form of a shower of gold coins, and tricked his own great-granddaughter Alkmene into having sex with him by impersonating her husband Amphitryon (which is, of course, another form of rape).

There’s a popular modern joke that 90% of the problems in Greek mythology are caused by Zeus not being able to “keep it in his pants,” but, even in ancient times, Zeus’s rapacious habits were already the subject of mockery. The Athenian playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) wrote a comedy titled The Clouds, which was first performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 423 BCE and later revised at some point between 420 and 417 BCE. In the play, an amoral character gives advice on what a man should do if he is caught in the act of adultery, saying, in lines 1080–1081, that he should “. . . ἐς τὸν Δί᾽ ἐπανενεγκεῖν, κἀκεῖνος ὡς ἥττων ἔρωτός ἐστι καὶ γυναικῶν:” (“. . .point at Zeus, and how he is also overcome with lust for women!”)

Many people, however, are not aware that Zeus’s habit of raping adolescents was not exclusively heterosexually oriented. In fact, in ancient times, one of the most famous stories about Zeus abducting and raping someone was about how he abducted a handsome adolescent boy named Ganymedes in the form of an eagle and forced him to become his catamite.

Lucifer Is Not a Name for Satan!

Most people believe that Lucifer is the true name for Satan. This notion has been reinforced by over a thousand years of western Christian tradition and by the constant appearances of Lucifer as a name for Satan in popular culture. In reality, however, the name Lucifer does not occur anywhere in any of the Hebrew or Aramaic texts that make up the Hebrew Bible, nor any of the Koine Greek texts that make up the Christian New Testament.

In fact, although the name does occur in many English translations of the Bible, it only occurs in one verse—the Book of Isaiah 14:12—which actually has nothing to do with Satan in any way. The only reason why anyone associates this passage in Isaiah with Satan at all is because some early Christians, including the church fathers Ioustinos Martys, Tertullianus of Carthage, and Origenes of Alexandria, spuriously interpreted it as an allegory for the fall of Satan.