Questions tagged [ancient-greece]
Ancient Greece was a civilization centred around the Greek peninsula, that lasted from the 8th century BC to the end of the classical antiquity era (ca. 600 AD).
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Why were male oracles replaced by female oracles?
Joeseph Fontenrose, a renown classicist, writes on Didyma:
It is now certain that after 334 BC, a prophetess spoke the responses
of Apollo Didymeus, as at Delphi a woman received Apollo's inspiration
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Was Pythagoras against traditional/contemporary Greek education?
There were, however, among the wise men some who despised the knowledge of the orators, lexicographers and schoolmasters, and cavilled at those who devoted themselves to these professions. To these ...
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What happened to the rowers during boarding actions in ancient Greece?
My research thus far has led me to the following conclusions: The main methods of dispatching enemy ships during naval combat in ancient Greece was by ramming and by boarding, with ramming being the ...
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Could skirmishers pass through friendly formations in ancient/medieval warfare? [closed]
I'm trying to get a visualization of how skirmishers were used in historical battles, especially during ancient Greek warfare. Could skirmisher formations pass through friendly formations? As in was ...
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When did Athenian archers pepper Spartan hoplites with arrows for days on an island?
The heading is basically all I remember from school. The hoplites lacked mobility and were thus harassed for day by the lightly armored Athenian archers. Athenian victory.
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What were the Oriental influences on Heraclitus?
I'm reading Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. In chapter two, he mentions in passing that Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus were influenced by oriental ideas.
Is he referring to ...
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Why is a piece missing in an English translation of Herodotus Histories?
Original text from Herodotus "Histories" (Book One, chapter 203):
ἡ δὲ Κασπίη θάλασσα ἐστὶ ἐπ᾽ ἑωυτῆς, οὐ συμμίσγουσα τῇ ἑτέρῃ θαλάσσῃ. τὴν μὲν γὰρ Ἕλληνὲς ναυτίλλονται πᾶσα καὶ ἡ ἔξω ...
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How did the Ancient Greeks forge and shape metal gears?
The closest to answer I've gotten is this video:
Wikipedia: Making gears by hand without machines
However, I don't really know if Archimedes and his contemporaries would have the above tools or not. I'...
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Did Democritus of Abdera, Thrace accuse the Jews of sacrificing Greeks in their religious rituals?
I was on Wikipedia reading about Blood Libel when I came across the following sentence:
The earliest known antecedent is from a man named Democritus (not the philosopher) mentioned in the Suda,[15]......
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What were the names of these two Ancient Greek boxing/pankration legends?
Does anyone know the name of — and hopefully references — the two following ancient Greek boxing legends, mentioned in this video by MMA coach Ramsey Dewey?
A boxer who, in sudden-death overtime, ...
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Why is syncretism mostly described through an "interpretatio graeca", rather than any other polytheism? [closed]
Ancient Greeks such as Herodotus thought other culture's gods (e.g. Egyptian) are actually same deities as theirs, just having different names.
For example, Plutarch said
Not different gods for ...
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What would a simple Carthaginian bronze coin have bought?
I possess a Carthegian Zeugitania bronze coin which was reportedly minted around 220 BC between the First and Second Punic War. It is 16mm wide and features Tanit on the reverse. My query is what ...
user56240
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Did the polytheist Greeks or Romans call their priests “father”?
I assume not, but perhaps it has just escaped me, because I am so used to this form of address from the Greek Orthodox Church. There might be texts showing that some of them did, or texts commenting ...
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How did ancient Greek city-states secure mines to mint coins?
I have a basic question about mines and coinage.
I have read that different cities minted their own coins. The Athenians were lucky with the Laurion mines which contained silver. But what did cities ...
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Were there political parties in ancient Greece?
So I'm reading a Spanish translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and he frequently mentions a "popular party". For example:
That is why the Athenians made many other ...
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Are there historic references to sorcerers and their scrolls?
According to 'Acts 19:19' (of the Christian bible):
A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the ...
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What was this king/ warrior's exact name (AGATHOFLIS)
I'm reading some books (in Arabic) about north African history, and exactly the Igilgili (modern day Jijel ) region and I found a story about a warrior / king who tried to conquer the region (4th ...
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Where did Theophrastus write about a "a common chest" into which funds are placed in case of a member's hardship?
Theophrastus was a pupil of Aristotle in Greek circa 371-287 B.C. The claim is that, in some unnamed writing by Theophrastus, he makes a mention of how some people in Ancient Greece would pool their ...
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Have any cultures had a four-element system different from fire, earth, air (or wind), and water?
Ancient Greek culture (Empedocles, Aristotle) had fire, earth, air, and water. Such a system is also known in Buddhism and alchemy. Sometimes the third of these elements is conceived as wind.
Hinduism ...
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How did Athenian citizens living standards compare to that of other Greek city-states?
Athenian democracy
Athenian democracy is described as having been a direct democracy whereby the citizens directly controlled all parts of the political process.
World History Encycopedia
In Athenian ...
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Ancient Greek term rendered incorrectly as numbers and Latin letters, "01KCDÇ". What is it?
In a book I am reading, I've spotted an error and would like to know how to correct it:
In the Athenian 01KCDÇ, for example, the family was based on a system of individual members which moved out, ...
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Did Rome annex Byzantium, the Greek city state, around 47AD?
This well-received YouTube video claims that Rome annexed Thrace in 45AD and then the Greek City State of Byzantium in 47 AD. Byzantium is also the last surviving Greek City State after the Rome ...
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How did Greeks view tall people, and was there a social premium placed on height?
Today, being more tall as a man is viewed as a positive attribute, but I wonder how it was viewed by the ancient Greeks. Was it better for a man to be short or tall.
The only instance I have is that ...
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Why do the bases of these pillars have grooves in them?
While exploring the ruins of the city of Perga we saw many things that looked like this:
It looks like the base of a column (though maybe it is a capital?). I am curious why there is a radial groove ...
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What is the correct publication date for Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War?
At Archive.org: Thucydides - The Peloponnesian War I found a digital edition of the subject work as translated by Rex Warner (9 March 1905 – 24 June 1986) with a purported publication date of 1916.
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As far as Themistocles's journey after his exile is concerned why do modern historians conclude that Plutarch meant Thasos instead of Naxos?
I am referring to the flight of Themistocles after his ostracism. When he finally reached Macedon and to Pydna he tried to reach Asia via a merchant ship. Thucydides says that a storm forced him to ...
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Where does Herodotus discuss judging the wisdom of decisions by the evidence at hand vs. the consequences?
Physicist/statistician Edwin T. Jaynes, in a broad overview of the history of ideas about reasoning amidst uncertainty (precursors to Bayesian inference), attributes an early articulation of an ...
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Would an Athenian citizen, reduced elsewhere into slavery, remain a slave if brought back to Athens?
I understand that it was common at one time for debt defaulters in Athens to be driven into a form of slavery, or bonded servitude, and that Solon abolished this practice and freed all such bondsmen. ...
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Did Plato practice pankration?
At what level, if at all did Plato practice the martial art of pankration and what direct evidence do we have for believing so?
Pankration is a Greek martial art; a sort of bare knuckles MMA in that ...
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Did Empedocles think that plants have sexes?
I was reading the book Flora Unveiled: The Discovery and Denial of Sex in Plants by Lee Taiz and Lincoln Taiz published by Oxford. In Chapter 8, "Plant sex from Empedocles to Theophrastus", ...
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Where were there fractal structures in ancient Rome?
I am looking for some examples of fractal or fractal-like structures and patterns in ancient Rome. I did some research but did not find much. On this topic I only found this article Scipedia.com where ...
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How did the Ptolemaics inherit the tradition of royal incest?
Cleopatra (VII), the last queen of Egypt, was forced to marry her younger brother to keep the royal blood in the family. This, of course was a form of royal incest.
From what I understand, the ...
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What were the demographics of the ancient Crete (any population estimates from 500BCE to 1BCE will do)?
I am looking for any estimates on the population of ancient Crete in the time period 500BCE to 1BCE.
I have searched for such estimates on google but I haven't found anything relevant.
(Note: The ...
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What were the demographics of the ancient Greek colonies of Cyprus (any population estimates from 500BCE to 1BCE will do)?
Are there any estimates on the ancient populations of Cyprus from 500BCE to 1BCE.
What were the demographics of the ancient Greek colonies of Cyprus (any population estimates from 500BCE to 1BCE will ...
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Did most major ancient cultures (e.g. the Mesopotamians) consider the heart as the main cognitive organ?
The Egyptians, Greeks (e.g. Aristotle), and Chinese certain did so. They believed that thinking was done by the heart.
Was this true about all major ancient civilizations? Were there exceptions?
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How many deaths resulted from the Wars of the Diadochi? [closed]
Alexander the Great invaded the Achaemenid Empire in 334 BC, successfully conquering it and dying in 323 BC. After his death, his Empire fell apart starting a series of wars called the Wars of the ...
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What is the Thalassic Age?
What is the Thalassic Age? What exactly happened during that time? This came from reading that Greeks during Hellenistic period conquered some areas in Phoenicia, Mesopotamia and Egypt and developed a ...
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How true is this observation concerning battle?
I came across a quote:
“One who risks his life in battle has the best chance of saving it; one who flees to save it is most likely to lose it” (Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, ed. E. Diehl2 1936-42.)
The ...
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Is there any verifiable ancient source for the etymology of βάρβαρος?
In The Shaping of Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Present, ed. Michael Burger (U of Toronto Press, 2014), we are given the following colorful detail (§2.3, p47):
What, according to the ...
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How do we know this bust is Aristotle?
The Wikipedia page of Aristotle has the following image of him:
How do we know that the bust represents Aristotle? For example, some ancient writers describe him as having small eyes, which is ...
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How did the lighthouse at Pharos work?
Was the ancient Greek pharos light house of ancient Alexandria, Egypt capable of creating light beams like a modern flash light?
Lots of websites which also includes ones from schools, colleges, ...
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Why did Pausanias travel to Greece?
Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the first century AD, which remains a priceless resource for classicists and archaeologists to this day.
I've made a quick perusal of the text itself, as ...
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How were the Greek city-states "unified"? [closed]
There was a sentence that said: "Though the Greek city-states were unified to some extent in the face of an external threat, as that threat waned, conflicts between the city-states made a ...
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Could a Hellenistic era smith discover the composition of an alloy? [closed]
Assuming a smith from the Hellenistic era of ancient Greece was given a lump of metal (specifically a gold alloy) and asked to produce more of the same kind of alloy, what methods would they have ...
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What did the Greeks call their gods while under Roman rule? [closed]
I read this question and it made me think. The Romans "inherited" the Greek gods, they just gave them new names, but what happened in actual Greece after the Roman conquest of Greece? Did ...
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Was there a temple dedicated to Old Age ("Geras") in ancient Athens?
Camus, in The myth of Sisyphus, mentions that
"There was in Athens a temple dedicated to old age. Children were taken there." ("Il y avait à Athènes un temple consacré à la vieillesse. ...
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Who governed while Alexander the Great was away conquering Asia?
I was just watching a video that mentions Alexander the Great at the edges of his empire, but then I was wondering who was governing back home while he was gone, I mean it took forever to travel back ...
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Were Draco’s laws particularly “draconian” at the time they were enacted?
There is a lot of talk about “draconian” laws at the moment, which got me thinking about Draco.
As I understand it, Draco produced the first written constitution of Athens, which stood for about 30 ...
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What were the requirements for Ancient Greek colonist groups?
Disclaimers
Given that the colonies were not created in empty space, it may not have been necessary to equip each and every group of colonists with the skills needed to be self sufficient.
Assuming, ...
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When was the first time Rome was mentioned in outside records (and specifically, in Greek ones)?
Most information that we have on the history of ancient Rome came from Roman records themselves. However, I'm curious about the first extant document where the city was unequivocally mentioned by ...
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