classical reception Archives - Page 6 of 7

Did Leonidas Really Say “Molon Labe”?

Ancient Greek is not like Latin. There are dozens of Latin phrases—such as et cetera, ad hoc, alias, alter ego, de facto, de jure, and so on—that are commonly used in everyday conversation. By contrast, there are very few phrases from the ancient Greek language that ordinary people can even recognize in the original language. μολὼν λαβέ (molṑn labé) is one of those phrases. Literally, it means: “Having come, take.” More idiomatically, it can be translated as: “Come and take them.”

Most people have heard a story about this phrase. The story normally goes a bit like this: in 480 BCE, the armies of the Achaemenid Empire were attempting to conquer mainland Greece, so King Leonidas I of Sparta brought an army of three hundred brave Spartan warriors to stop the invading armies at the pass of Thermopylai in central Greece. Then, when King Xerxes I of the Achaemenid Empire ordered Leonidas and his soldiers to hand over their weapons, Leonidas supposedly replied with two words: “μολὼν λαβέ”—”Come and take them.”

This makes for a rather fine story. Historically speaking, however, this incident almost certainly never really happened. In fact, the earliest version of the story is not attested until over four hundred years after Leonidas’s death and that version of the story is very different from the version that most people know today—for one thing, it doesn’t even include the phrase “μολὼν λαβέ.”

How Historically Accurate Is Netflix’s ‘Barbarians’?

There have a been a lot of Netflix originals related to ancient history recently. One such show is the German historical drama series Barbarians, which was first released on Netflix on 23 October 2020. The show is very loosely based on the historical events leading up to and surrounding the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, in which an alliance of several Germanic tribes won a crushing victory against the Romans and destroyed three whole Roman legions.

A lot of people have commented on Barbarians’ similarities to the History channel series Vikings, but there are a couple factors that differentiate it. One is that Barbarians is set about eight hundred years earlier than Vikings in the world of antiquity rather than the world of the Middle Ages. The other factor is that Barbarians is overtly a German show that is clearly made for a German target audience with German concerns; whereas Vikings was clearly made with British and North American target audiences primarily in mind.

Barbarians is mostly fiction, but, so far at least, it does generally stick more closely to the broad outline of historical events than Vikings. (There are, for instance, no bizarre scenes in which historical figures who actually lived centuries apart are portrayed as meeting in person.) In this article, I want to talk about aspects of the show that are historically accurate and other aspects where the makers of the show have taken some creative license.

Was Julius Caesar a Roman Emperor?

People who know very little about the Roman Empire will tell you that Julius Caesar was a Roman emperor. People who know a little bit more about the Roman Empire will tell you that Julius Caesar never held the title of emperor, but rather only the title of dictator perpetuo, meaning “dictator in perpetuity.”

Both of these groups of people are wrong. The truth is that things are complicated. Our English word emperor is derived from the Latin word imperator, which is a title that Julius Caesar actually held. Nonetheless, this title didn’t quite mean what we think of as “emperor” in the time when Julius Caesar was alive. In order to answer the question of whether Julius Caesar was a Roman emperor, we need to talk about how titles can change meaning over time.

Did Cleopatra Really Dissolve a Pearl in Vinegar?

There are a lot of famous stories about the Greek-Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator that are probably not historically true. For instance, as I discuss in this article from August 2019, while it is highly probable that Cleopatra killed herself, it is highly unlikely that she really did so by allowing an asp to bite her on the breast. Similarly, as I discuss in this article from October 2020, it is virtually certain that she never owned any sort of vibrator powered by angry bees.

One of the most famous stories about her that I have not yet addressed, though, is the story that she once dissolved an ancient pearl that was worth tens of millions of sesterces in vinegar as a party trick to impress her lover Marcus Antonius. Unlike the bizarre vibrator story, the story about the pearl is actually found in the ancient sources. Nevertheless, it is almost certainly a fabrication invented by Roman propagandists to portray Cleopatra in the worst possible light.

Was Cleopatra Really Hypersexual?

In popular culture, the Ptolemaic Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator is routinely portrayed as wildly hypersexual. If you’ve been on the internet lately, there’s a good chance you’ve heard a lot of crazy stories about how she supposedly threw wild sex orgies, had sex with over a hundred men in one night, had a vibrator that was powered by angry bees, and once offered to have sex with anyone who wanted it under the condition that they would be executed the next morning.

None of these stories have any kind of basis in the ancient sources, however. In fact, historically speaking, Cleopatra is only known for certain to have had sex with two men in her entire life: Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius. The popular image of Cleopatra as an insatiable nymphomaniac is ultimately rooted in a vicious Roman propaganda campaign to discredit her, but modern authors, filmmakers, video game developers, and internet factoid-mongers have taken it to a whole new level.

Why Is Hollywood So Fixated on Cleopatra Anyway?

On 11 October 2020, it was officially announced that Gal Gadot, a white Israeli actress, had been cast to play the Hellenistic Egyptian queen Cleopatra VII Philopator in an upcoming epic period drama titled Cleopatra, which will be directed by Patty Jenkins and scripted by Laeta Kalogridis. This casting predictably set off outrage on social media over the fact that Cleopatra will not be portrayed by a Black actress.

I’ve already written an entire article in which I discuss Cleopatra’s ancestry and her appearance in great detail. In short, her ancestry was almost entirely Greek and her only known ancestor with non-Greek ancestry was her three times great-grandmother Kleopatra I of Syra, who was of mixed Greek, Persian, and Sogdian ancestry. There is one argument that people have tried to make that Cleopatra’s mother may have been a native Egyptian woman, but it is founded on multiple layers of wishful thinking and dubious assumptions and it is far more likely that her mother was Cleopatra V Tryphaina, her father’s only known wife, who was also his sister or his cousin.

In this article, though, I want to answer a different question: Why Cleopatra? Why is it that, out of three thousand some years of ancient Egyptian history, the only Egyptian queen that Hollywood is interested in making movies about is the one who was definitely of European ancestry? It’s clear that a very large section of the general public wants a movie about a native Egyptian queen portrayed by an actress of color. I say that, if that’s what people want, Hollywood should give that to them. Thankfully, there are plenty of native Egyptian queens and goddesses that Hollywood could potentially make movies about.

Where Does the Myth of Medusa Come From?

Medusa is one of the most fascinating figures in classical mythology and one who bears a deep contemporary resonance. Indeed, just yesterday, it was announced that a controversial statue of her would be installed in Collect Pond Park in New York City. In order to understand this statue and the controversy surrounding it, we need to talk about the bizarre and fascinating history of how the Medusa myth has evolved over the past 2,800 years or so.

The story about Medusa that most people today are familiar with holds that she was once an extraordinarily beautiful mortal woman, but then she was raped by the god Poseidon in the temple of the goddess Athena. Athena was disgusted by the desecration of her temple, so she cursed Medusa, giving her snakes for hair and making it so that anyone who saw her face would be instantly turned to stone. Then, eventually, the hero Perseus came along and beheaded her.

This story, however, is actually radically different from the story the ancient Greeks were familiar with. In the oldest surviving sources for the Medusa myth, she is seemingly born a Gorgon with the ability to turn people to stone at a glance, she is never raped by Poseidon, and she is never cursed by Athena. Oh, and she apparently also had the four-legged lower body of a horse.

Were Achilles and Patroklos Lovers?

In twenty-first-century adaptations of the story of the Trojan War, Achilles and Patroklos are often portrayed as gay lovers. This is how they are portrayed, for instance, in Madeline Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles (published in 2012) and in the BBC television series Troy: Fall of a City (released in 2018). Many people have wondered how faithful these portrayals are to the ancient sources. In other words, were Achilles and Patroklos really in a sexual relationship?

As it turns out, the debate over whether Achilles and Patroklos were lovers goes all the way back to antiquity. There are some surviving ancient sources that unambiguously portray them as lovers—but there are also ancient sources that explicitly deny that their relationship was ever sexual.

Was Plato a Feminist?

The ancient Athenian philosopher Plato is one of the most renowned thinkers of all time. The association of his name with any idea seems to automatically lend that idea credibility. It is therefore little surprise that the claim that Plato was a feminist pops up both on the internet and in scholarly literature. Some authors have even tried to claim that Plato invented feminism. Since these claims seem to be so popular, let’s look into them and see how they stand up to the historical evidence.

For the purposes of this article, I will be using the first definition of the word feminism given in Merriam-Webster, which is: “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” This is a definition that I think most feminists today would agree is accurate.

No, Ancient Greek Slaves Did Not Like Being Enslaved

It seems like it should be obvious that slaves in ancient Greece did not like being enslaved. Unfortunately, things that seem like they should be obvious are often things that many people don’t find obvious at all. There is a disturbingly widespread claim that slaves in ancient Greece were happy to be enslaved and that they preferred slavery over freedom.

This claim recently received attention among classicists due to a description for a lecture by an esteemed classics professor for The Great Courses Daily, which begins with the shocking assertion “Slavery was the ideal condition for some people in ancient Greece.”

The claim has been around for a very long time, however. It has been widely disseminated through books and other media and, despite the valiant efforts of some classicists to point out that ancient slavery was cruel and unjust, many people continue to regard it as benign or at worst a necessary evil.