Hot answers tagged ancient-greece
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Herodotus' Histories is the primary source for the second Persian invasion of Greece, which started with the famous1 Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Herodotus describes the battle in Book 7 (Polymnia) of the Histories, starting at paragraph 175:
The Greeks, on their return to the Isthmus, took counsel together concerning the words of Alexander, and ...
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The Ancient Spartan society was based around the laws of Lycurgus, the rhetrae1, that were passed down through oral tradition. A possible explanation of why the laws were not written, and why Spartans didn't keep records in general, comes from Plutarch's The Life of Lycurgus:
[Plut. Lyc. 13.1] None of his laws were put into writing by Lycurgus, indeed, ...
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It would be very interesting to see a chart of rate of innovation over time in western civilization.
Of course, this begs the question of what is "innovation". Do you count number of inventions? Do you give more weight to inventions that would have long lasting significance through history? Or ones that may have been less influential but providing a huge ...
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Prior to Philip's time and the League of Corinth (337 BC), the Ancient Greek world was fragmented in (often warring) city states and kingdoms. There is little sense in discussing a Greek nationality at a time where, for example, Athenians identified themselves as Athenians first and as Hellenes later. Pericles' reforms in 451 BC exemplify the distinction, ...
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Papyrus was known to the Greek world since the 8th century BC, as it's mentioned in the Odyssey:
[Hom. Od. 21.390] Now there lay beneath the portico the cable of a curved ship, made of byblus plant, wherewith he made fast the gates, and then himself went within. Thereafter he came and sat down on the seat from which he had risen, and gazed upon ...
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In ancient Greece blonde hair was associated with beauty. For example in Homer's Iliad we learn of the unmatched beauty of Helen of Troy, who was depicted as having blonde hair. Likewise the beautiful Aphrodite was known for her golden hair, which is confirmed in Hesiod's writings, as well as many ancient artworks. There are numerous other cases of light ...
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I have dealt with this question in my article, "Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art," in American Journal of Archaeology 1989, which can be accessed either through JSTOR or through Academia.com, under my name. I am also editing a multi-author book, Nudity as a Costume in the Ancient Mediterranean, where I take up the subject of Greek nudity again.
The ...
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Ancient Greece isn't as cohesive as Ancient Rome, each city-state had its own social structures. I'll concentrate this answer to Athens only, and try to give you at least another answer for Sparta.
The earliest known division of the Athenian society is ascribed to Theseus, the city's legendary founder, with three basic classes:
Eupatridae
The nobility, ...
9
No surviving ancient histories describe Hellenic civilization preceding the Greek Dark Ages except for anecdotes relating to Homeric characters— and scholars are not even sure whether the Achæans can be identified as the Mycenaeans or not.
What we know of Mycenaean civilization is almost entirely from the archeological record, and if Homeric stories are ...
7
There are no conclusive archaeological evidence for the event, or series of events that's today known as the Dorian invasion. Even the name of the theory itself is problematic, as it suggests a violent and perhaps swift large scale event, an oft used alternative1 is "Dorian migration", while in Greek the event is known as "Κάθοδος των Δωριέων", the descent ...
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The Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BC) was a testing time for the Athenian judicial system, every victory brought forth new heroes and every loss new scapegoats. The Athenians had lost their strongest asset, the leadership of Pericles, when the plague hit the city in the first year of the war, the lack of an experienced successor and the physical and mental ...
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This is a matter of debate, the Anemospilia findings have been controversial since the site was first excavated in 1979, and the Kydonia findings are quite recent; the sceleton was discovered in 2010. Insofar there has been no conclusive study of the Kydonia findings, the excavations are on going and Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki, the archaeologist responsible ...
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Premise: I do not have Buxton's book, so my objections are based on other sources. The origin of this claim are to be traced in a series of references. These include:
Children of inferior parents, and of the better, when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be.
Plato, The Republic, 461 C
As ...
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The third book of Aristotle's Politics is focused on citizenship and its merits, and from early on it provides enlightening information about the benefits of citizenship:
[Aristot. Pol. 3.1274b] But a state is a composite thing, in the same sense as any other of the things that are wholes but consist of many parts; it is therefore clear that we must ...
6
The Graeco-Roman world is a unique example of intertwined cultures, the geographical and historical proximity of the two civilizations is such that's it's often impossible to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. In extremely broad terms, it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the political system of the Romans were heavily influenced by the ...
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It has nothing to do with ancient Greek culture or neoclassicism. Almost all American Greek-letter societies (including general/social fraternities, service fraternities, honor societies, and professional fraternities) follow the example of Phi Beta Kappa.
Remember that the traditional university curriculum included a heavy emphasis on classical texts, and ...
5
Hypatia was killed by order of the Church for being a scientist who dared to believe things that were contrary to Holy Scripture... and so was Giordano Bruno. In between, there were a lot of people killed and documents declared heretic.
Then there is the Index Liborum Prohibitorum - an Index of Prohibited Books - that made scientific texts like Kepeler's ...
5
The main Greek innovation in education was the Socratic Method. This mainly involved the teacher questioning the students, hopefully leading them to a better understanding of things that way.
I don't know much about Egyptian education, but between the times of Alexander and Mohammed the upper classes in Egypt were culturally Greek anyway.
By comparison you ...
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Your question provides the basic response for books that are widely reviewed, however for books that are not widely reviewed:
Generally if a book hasn't been peer reviewed, that tells you all you need to know about the scholarly response to the work. Unless the book is in your sub-discipline and problem area it is discardable. Textbooks, for example, ...
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Do not underestimate amazon's user reviews. One must exercise caution and Quellenforschung there, of course, because some of the reviews are written by bigots and ignoramuses; others are written by good people who were perhaps looking for a different kind of book. Nevertheless, there is a lot of useful information there.
For ancient and medieval subjects, ...
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The earliest mention of deafness and otology can be found in the Ebers Papyrus (1550 BC), a list of medical remedies and spells against common ailments. The Ancient Egyptians of the era treated various ear diseases, including the "Ear-that-Hears-Badly", by injecting olive oil, red lead, ant eggs, bat wings and goat urine into the ears1.
In general, the ...
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In the story of the Trojan War, if not necessarily in the text of Homer's Iliad, Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra learns of the fall of Troy via a relay of fire beacons. In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, she's said to have received the news in Mycenae (approximately 400 miles away) the very same night that Troy fell, and Aeschylus describes the path of the transmitted ...
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This week's episode of In Our Time on Epicureanism suggested that Epicurus and many of his followers could be valid examples of "atheists" in "polytheistic" ancient Greece.
According to one guest Epicurus' atomic theory (which build on Democritus') insists that each and everything, and thus including gods, is made of material atoms. Now whether this ...
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That particular helmet is of 20th century design - 19th century pith helmets were initially modelled on the Pickelhaube. No hellenic connection as far as I can see.
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According to this well sourced article, wine was diluted to reduce its strength, in order to avoid over-inebriation. Those who did not drink it diluted were seen as barbaric, uncultured, or besotted.
There are claims on wikipedia and other online sources that the ancients drank diluted wine or small-beer to avoid water-borne illness, but I can't seem to ...
5
Diogenes Laërtius mentions several of Pythagoras' travels and he mentions that the philosopher visited the Chaldeans and the Magi:
ἐγένετ' οὖν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, ὁπηνίκα καὶ Πολυκράτης αὐτὸν Ἀμάσιδι συνέστησε δι' ἐπιστολῆς· καὶ ἐξέμαθε τὴν φωνὴν αὐτῶν, καθά φησιν Ἀντιφῶν ἐν τῷ Περὶ τῶν ἐν ἀρετῇ πρωτευσάντων, καὶ παρὰ Χαλδαίοις ἐγένετο καὶ Μάγοις. εἶτ' ἐν Κρήτῃ ...
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This is a complicated issue. One thing seems certain - there was no law against exposure of infants anywhere in Greece, in particular in Athens. (Unlike, say, in the late Roman Empire where such a law was promulgated in 374). It was certainly done occasionally, but whether this was a prevalent or a fringe practice in Athens is a matter of much scholarly ...
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The greatest destruction of knowledge caused by Christianity occurred much earlier at the start of the dark ages. The burning of the library at Alexandria and the murder of Hypatia (she was skinned alive with oyster shells) is but one famous example of the damage wrought at that time by christian mobs. These were made up of people who expected the world to ...
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a great page on this exact topic. The key ideas why there is so much male nudity are two-fold:
the Greek reverence for athletic competitions,
and the athletic male as the pinnacle of those athletic competitions.
Because the Greeks felt that sport was such an important part of what was good about humanity, ...
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Well alcohol does have a strong anti-bacterial effect,and adding water to wine was a way to create more drink as there was very little clean drinking water. During the fermentation process many microbes die, eventually the yeast too dies in the anaerobic environment. I think adding water to wine and letting the two mix for a while would kill a significant ...
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