Many Ancient Greeks Believed Earrings Were A Sign Of Weakness

In ancient Greece, a man wearing earrings could be accused of being weak or—gods forbid—of being womanly. The wearing of earrings was often associated with the Anatolian region of Lydia, which was long characterized by the Greeks as a place made soft by luxury. Herodotus summed up the Greek view of Lydia in this quote on Cyrus the Great’s pacification of the Lydians: “let the Lydians be pardoned; and lay on them this command, that they may not revolt or be dangerous to you; send, I say, and forbid them to possess weapons of war, and command them to wear tunics under their cloaks and buskins on their feet, and to teach their sons lyre-playing and song and dance and huckstering. Then, O king, you will soon see them turned to women instead of men; and thus you need not fear lest they revolt." (The Histories, Book I, section 155).

This Greek disapproval of earrings, and prejudice against Lydians, reappeared in Xenophon’s Anabasis Kyrou (Upcountry March/Expedition of Cyrus), in which he documented the experiences of a Greek mercenary army, called the Ten Thousand, that was caught up in an ill-fated rebellion of Cyrus the Younger of Persia. By book III, section 1 of that text, the Greek mercenaries found themselves in dire straits—Cyrus the Younger was slain, the Greek mercenary generals had been arrested or executed, and angry Persian satraps were stalking the Greeks like vultures. The mercenary army, stranded deep in Persian territory without their chief generals, camped with an uncertain future awaiting them in the morning. Yet, although the generals were gone or dead, many of their second-in-commands and company commanders were still alive and with the army. Fortunately for the rest of the Ten Thousand, around 100 of these surviving mercenary officers convened to decide what the mercenary company should do next.

Xenophon was one of the men present and he would later take command of the mercenary army’s rear guard. According to Xenophon, there was a man named Apollonides at the officer meeting, who argued that the mercenaries should surrender to the Persians. Xenophon claimed that he personally rebuffed Apollonides’ opinion by referencing the recent executions of the mercenary generals and called Apollonides an oaf and a fool, not qualified for any military position except that of baggage handler. According to Xenophon, another officer at the meeting took a much more personal jab at Apollonides. This second attack involved both earrings and Lydia. A certain Agasias of Stymphalus reportedly proclaimed before the gathered officers, “ he [Apollonides] doesn’t belong in Boeotia or anywhere in Greece: he has both ears pierced, Lydian-style—I’ve seen them.’ This was true, [stated Xenophon] and they evicted the man from their company” (Anabasis Kyrou, Book III, section 1).

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Painting from the House of Marcus Fabius Rufus in Pompeii, Italy, executed in the Second Style and depicting the Greco-Roman goddess Venus Aphrodite, c. 1st century BCE, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Sources:

• Anabasis Kyrou (The Expedition/ Upcountry March of Cyrus) by Xenophon and translated by Robin Waterfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• The Histories by Herodotus, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/1C*.html
   

Quintus Fabius Pictor, Rome’s First Historian, Wrote Centuries After The Greeks Pioneered The Field Of History

Tradition held that the kingdom of Rome was founded in the mid-8th century BCE. In fact, archaeologists believe permanent settlement in the region of Rome began as early as 1000 BCE. Yet, the 8th century was indeed a time when the primitive Roman town was becoming a wealthy city with growing power and influence. By the 7th century BCE, Rome had also become fairly literate and the city urbanized enough to officially be labeled as a city-state around 625 BCE. The combination of pride in the growing city, and the rise of literacy, undoubtedly led some Romans to start preserving stories of past events and people through spoken language (such as poetry, plays and eulogies) and these sorts of remembrances were later recorded in writing. During the 5th century BCE, after Rome had become a republic, even more useful documents about Roman events and people were being produced, such as the Fasti (Rome’s list of governing consuls) and the Annales maximi, a reported 80-book chronicle of Roman leaders and miscellaneous events. Yet, despite such vocal and tangible sources being available, it took a remarkably long time for Rome to produce a native historian who was willing to pull together the various sources into a narrative.

Greek scholarly pioneers of the 5th century BCE, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, ushered in the field of history. Neither Herodotus nor Thucydides specifically mentioned Rome, but they did, however, sometimes digress into commenting on events in Italy and they both mentioned the Etruscans. Yet, other less known 5th-century Greek writers did mention Rome—Hellanicus of Lesbos and Damastes of Sigeum interestingly wrote that Rome was where Aeneas built a new life after the Trojan War, a myth that Romans would full-heartedly endorse. Other than the link to Aeneas, however, Greeks of the 5th century BCE seemed uninterested in the history of Rome.

Things began to change in the 4th century BCE. The Gallic sack of Rome around 390 BCE and the subsequent Roman wars to regain power in the region caught the attention of Greek observers. The Gallic sack of Rome, alone, was mentioned by at least three 4th-century Greek scholars: Theopompus, Heraclides Ponticus, and the famous Aristotle. Yet, it was Rome’s actions in the 3rd century—featuring the Third Samnite War, the Pyrrhic War, and the beginning of the Punic Wars—when Greeks truly began craving information on those curious Romans in Italy. Greek historians such as Hieronymus of Cardia, Timaeus of Tauromenium, and (decades later) Polybius, answered that new historical demand.

Interestingly, even though Greek historians of the 3rd century BCE were beginning to delve into Roman topics, the city of Rome, itself, still had not reportedly produced a single historian. Nevertheless, a Roman senator living in the second half of the 3rd century was about to lead the way in making the topic of the past become a new scholarly passion in Rome. His name was Quintus Fabius Pictor and he reportedly published the first native Roman History around 200 BCE, just before or after Rome achieved victory in the Second Punic War.

Unfortunately, little is known about Pictor and his text, which is now lost to us. We do know that he was a senator and that he considered himself a statesman first and a historian second. As he was a member of Rome’s governing body, it is unsurprising to learn that his text was largely designed to inspire patriotism and nationalistic fervor in his Roman readers. Yet, his work was not all bad. He reportedly formatted his history like the works of historians from Greece, and Pictor even chose Greek as the language for his book. Even though Pictor’s history was by no means a masterpiece, it was the icebreaker that got Romans writing about their past. Not long after Pictor, Quintus Ennius (c. 239-169 BCE) published a curious Latin poem, called the Annales, which traced Roman history down to the Punic Wars in verse. After Ennius, came Cato the Elder (c. 234-148 BCE), whose 7-book Origines was the first Roman history in Latin prose.

Unfortunately, by the age of Pictor, Ennius and Cato, the Roman Republic was already centuries old, not to mention the pre-Republic period of kings in Rome. Although oral history, monuments, and old records from government archives and temples could provide information such as leader names, military conquests, natural disasters and diplomatic agreements, the late-arriving Roman historians had little historical context with which to weave the bullet points of miscellaneous information together. Yet, weave it together they did, narrating the story of the birth of Rome and the founding of the Republic through an intriguing patchwork of history, folklore and myth.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (King Numa and the Nymph Egeria, painted by    Felice Giani  (1758–1823), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The History of Rome by Livy, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• The Beginnings of Rome by T. J. Cornell. New York: Routledge, 1995.
• https://www.britannica.com/place/Roman-Republic 

The Oracles Of Dodona

Herodotus (c. 490-425/420 BCE), the father of Greek history, claimed that Dodona in Epirus held the honor of being the most ancient oracle site in the Greek world. The earliest written information on Dodona came from the epic poet, Homer. In the Iliad (book sixteen), Achilles proclaimed in an informative speech that Zeus was the god of Dodona and that his priests there slept on the ground with perpetually unwashed feet. Homer elaborated on the topic in the Odyssey (book fourteen), where Odysseus spoke of a sacred oak tree in Dodona from which the will of Zeus could be determined. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, claimed to have personally visited Dodona and confirmed that there was a sacred oak in the region. Besides affirming the importance of the sacred tree, Herodotus provided additional information on the origin and organizational structure of the oracle of Dodona.

Herodotus presented three origin stories for the oracle of Dodona in his text, The Histories. The first tale he claimed to have obtained during his travels in Egypt. According to the Egyptian version, two priestesses in Egyptian Thebes were captured by Phoenicians and sold as slaves in different regions. One was sent to the Siwa Oasis and the other ended up in Epirus, where both priestesses founded new temples that became sites for oracles of Zeus. The second version of the story came from Dodona, and was supposedly narrated to Herodotus by the three reigning prophetesses of the temple, whom he named as Promeneia, Timarete and Nicandra. Their story also began in Egyptian Thebes, but instead of enslaved priestesses, it was two black doves that flew respectively to Siwa and Epirus. When these doves reached their destinations, the birds allegedly gained the power to speak and instructed the locals to build temples to Zeus. After recounting these tales, Herodotus, himself, proposed a third version—a hybrid between the two. He theorized that the black doves mentioned in Dodona were symbols for the captured priestesses of the Egyptian story and that the miracle of the dove speaking was analogous to the priestesses learning vernacular languages used in Siwa and Epirus.

Whatever the truth may have been about the site’s origin, Dodona was undoubtedly an important religious center with very ancient roots. There was activity in the region before or during the final centuries of the second millennium BCE, around the time of the Mycenaean Civilization in Greece. The religious cult in Dodona seemed to have originally worshiped an earth deity, but the site eventually became associated with Zeus and the titan goddess, Dione. By the time of Herodotus, the temple at Dodona was inhabited by a team of three prophetic women, who were fittingly known as the Doves. Over the years, the way the Doves divined the future seemed to change, yet it usually depended on a sacred oak tree or birds. In some stories, the oracles received their message by listening to avian chirps. In other accounts, they divined the future by interpreting the sounds of wind, or even falling acorns, hitting against a bronze surface, which was sometimes a gong and at other times a cauldron. The most popular form of divination, however, was apparently to perceive the future based on the rustling of leaves from the sacred oak.

Although Dodona was surpassed by Delphi in terms of popularity and importance, the Doves continued to interpret the gods’ will for pilgrims until the 4th century CE. The end for the temple at Dodona is believed to have come during the reign of Emperor Theodosius (r. 379-395), who formally adopted the Nicaean Creed version of Christianity as the faith of the Roman Empire, outlawing paganism and other interpretations of Christianity.

Picture Attribution: (The Oracle, by Camillo Miola (Biacca), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Histories by Herodotus, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• The Iliad by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by Peter Jones. New York: Penguin Classics, 2014. 
• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. 
• http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanisDione.html 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Dodona/ 
• https://www.ancient-greece.org/history/dodona.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/place/Dodona  

The Scythians Of Herodotus Versus The Scythians Discovered By Archaeologists

Much of what we know about the Scythians comes from Herodotus, the 5th-century BCE father of history from Halicarnassus. In book four of The Histories, Herodotus described what he had found out about the origin story of the Scythian people, their military exploits and what he perceived to be their daily lifestyle.

The framework of Herodotus’ history of the Scythians is fairly accurate. He wrote that the Scythians were a fierce nomadic tribe that specialized in horsemanship and archery. As warriors, they were powerful enough to strike fear into the hearts of both the Greeks and the Persians. They even successfully repelled a massive invasion led by the Persian King Darius I in the late 6th-century, years before the Persians decided to launch their ill-fated campaigns against Greece.

On the other hand, Herodotus wrote about more (fair warning) rather graphic and disturbing accounts, where truth became increasingly merged with folklore. Among other statements, Herodotus claimed that the Scythians held annual sacrifices to their gods, where horses, cattle and prisoners of war were ceremoniously slaughtered. During this ritual, Herodotus claimed that the Scythians cut off the right arms of the human sacrifices and sometimes drank the blood of their victims.

The ancient historian elaborated on the subject of what the Scythians did to their fallen enemies—he claimed that they severed the heads of their foes for the purpose of using them as tokens to determine the size of their share in war loot. According to Herodotus, the Scythians did not let these heads go to waste. The historian matter-of-factly claimed that the Scythians transformed the scalps into handkerchiefs, and after accumulating a number of these macabre trophies, they would be sewn into forms of clothing. Herodotus went on to say that skulls of the slain were particularly important. He claimed that the Scythians made grisly chalices or bowls from the skullcaps, covered with hide on the outside and sometimes gilded on the interior.

While Herodotus’s account is a fascinating read, archaeologists have found little evidence to back up his claims. For example, at least 5,700 golden artifacts were uncovered in a Scythian burial mound (called a kurgan) excavated in Tuva, Siberia, yet not a single skull chalice was found among the horde of treasure. Similarly, furs and the fragments of cloth garments were discovered in the mound, but no evidence of clothing made from human skin was found. Even so, some of Herodotus’ other claims are plausible. The killing of prisoners and the keeping of unsettling war trophies was, unfortunately, a fairly common practice in many areas of the ancient world. As for sacrifices, archaeologists did indeed find horses, servants and concubines who were killed and buried along with fallen Scythian kings in their burial grounds, but this tragic practice, too, was not uncommon in other areas of the world.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture attribution: (Decoration from the top of a Scythian comb. Found in the Soloha kurgan. Now resides in the Hermitage museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• From The Histories by Herodotus (Book IV), translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola (Penguin Classics, 2002). 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scythian 
• https://www.ancient.eu/timeline/Scythians/ 
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/features/world/europe/russia/scythians-text/1  
• https://www.archaeology.org/slideshow/4562-russia-scythian-burial-mound-slideshow 
• https://www.realmofhistory.com/2016/07/09/10-facts-scythians-warfare/  
• http://listverse.com/2010/01/05/top-10-interesting-facts-about-the-scythians/

The Unbelievable Story Of The Semi-Mythical Pharaoh, Sesostris

An interesting character named Sesostris made an appearance in the work of Herodotus (490-425/420 BCE), who is considered to be the father of the history genre and profession. Even though Herodotus was a historian, his work was thoroughly laced with folklore and mythology, and he often made no attempt to separate sober fact from theatrical embellishment. As such, fair warning is in order—this article is not about what actually occurred in ancient Egypt. Instead, this article takes a look at the bizarre piece of folklore that Herodotus recorded about the semi-mythical pharaoh, Sesostris.

Modern historians think that Herodotus’ Sesostris was an exaggerated character that combined, under one name, the feats of several historical Twelfth Dynasty (roughly 20th-18th century BCE) pharaohs of Egypt, particularly Senusret (or Senwosret) I and II, as well as Ramses II. Herodotus, or the sources he drew upon, collected the accomplishments of theses pharaohs under the broad character of Sesostris, claiming that this mythical man was an expansionist king who successfully conquered lands from Ethiopia in the south, to the borderlands of the Thracian and Scythian territory in the north.

The most shocking story about Sesostris came after Herodotus finished recording the conquests of this fictitious king. As the tale goes, Sesostris was returning to Egypt after years of continuous war. He was met by his brother at the edge of the Nile Delta, at a place called Daphne, near the city of Pelusium. This brother hosted a banquet for Sesostris, and also invited Sesostris’ wife, as well as two of the pharaoh’s six sons, to attend the event. This brother, however, was not looking to celebrate—he had tasted power as the governor of Egypt while the pharaoh was away, and did not want to relinquish control back to Sesostris. Therefore, the brother had firewood piled around the venue where the banquet was being hosted and set fire to the place while Sesostris was inside.

Sesostris had not expected such treachery from his brother and soon found himself surrounded by a wall of flames. With the flames closing in, Sesostris’ wife proposed an unthinkable solution. She calmly explained that she and Sesostris could easily escape the moat of fire by simply using their two sons who were present at the banquet as a bridge over the deadly heat. Sesostris was apparently willing to sacrifice his children to save himself and his wife. According to the grim tale, the royal couple nonchalantly used the bodies of their sons as a way to escape the trap, leaving the two princes to burn to death in the fire.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Pyramids of Giza and circular flames, both [Public Domain] via Pixabay.com).

Sources:

• From The Histories by Herodotus (Book II), translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola (Penguin Classics, 2002).  

Most Speeches From Ancient History Books Are Fake

This statement will not come as a surprise to those who are well-versed in history, but others who know less about the evolution of historical writing may find the idea shocking—most speeches recorded by ancient historians were falsified. Unless the historian from antiquity specifically stated that an included speech within his work was derived from an official tablet or monument, you can safely assume that most of the speech was fabricated by the author. For the most part, the earliest historians (except Thucydides) did not see this as a problem; the goal of most ancient historians was to make their work dramatic and exciting, even at the expense of truthfulness.

Although the speeches recorded by ancient historians were usually falsified, that does not mean that the ideas and strategies presented in the speeches were inaccurate. Most of the classical historians, even if the speech was wholly their own creation, tried to write their speeches in the character of their subject. If the historian was writing a speech for a cautious man, the speech would be written from a viewpoint of caution; if the speech was for a man of rash action, the wording would be tailored toward careless impulsiveness. In short, ancient writers usually had no clue what the people they wrote about actually said, so they made do with fabricating speeches that they believed were in character with what these people would have said.

Some ancient historians who were writing about contemporary events did likely hear speeches from the people that they wrote about in their books. Yet, the ancients did not have the convenience of televised speeches or audio recordings that now grace us today—it was simply much harder to record or remember speeches with accuracy in the days of old. As a result, even speeches that were written down by first-hand witnesses were more often than not simplified summaries of what was actually said.

Thucydides, regarded by many to be the greatest historian from ancient Greece, openly wrote about the use of fake speeches in history books, including his own:

“In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listed to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.”

(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1, chapter 22)

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Pericles' funeral oration, painted by Philipp Foltz (1805–1877), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated by Rex Warner and introduced by M. I. Finley. New York: Penguin Classics, 1972.  

The Otherworldly Bones Supposedly Belonging To The Ancient Persians Who Fell At The Battle of Plataea

In the region of Plataea, around 479 BCE, the combined forces of the Greek coalition crossed their spears and swords against an army of Persians that was led by Mardonius. The king of Persia, Xerxes I, was already long gone from Greece—he, personally, abandoned the campaign after his disastrous defeat at the naval Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE and decided to leave the administration of the war to his generals. When Xerxes left, he understandably took with him an escort made up of a substantial portion of his invasion army. Yet, the manpower that remained behind with the Persian commander, Mardonius, was still impressive. There is very little certainty as to exactly how many men were present at the Battle of Plataea, but a common statistic is that Mardonius had around 100,000 men and faced an army of approximately 40,000 Greeks. For several days, these two sides maneuvered and fought, with the Greeks eventually emerging with a decisive victory. Mardonius was among the estimated tens-of-thousands of Persians who were slaughtered during the battle. Although conflict continued between Persia and the Greek cities, the Battle of Plataea was an irrecoverable deathblow to the Persian invasion of mainland Greece.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Greek forces captured the Mardonius’ supplies and treasury. In the camp of the Persians, there was an enormous quantity of rich food, gold, silver and artwork, which the Greeks divided among themselves. Yet, also left behind were the remains of thousands of slain Persians. The historian, Herodotus (c. 490-425/420 BCE), wrote that while the various Greek dead were respectfully cared for by their own respective comrades, the Persian corpses from the Battle of Plataea were left to rot.

Herodotus went on to say that Greek treasure hunters, who were scavenging for overlooked valuables, began to notice strange things about the Persian corpses. Odd skeletal remains were found on the battlefield—the Greek observers believed the remains were former Persian soldiers, but some of the discoveries seemed to be anything but human. A peculiar skull and jawbone were supposedly discovered. Herodotus claimed that there were no joins or joints in the different sections of the skull. Similarly, the jaw supposedly did not have individual teeth, but a single, solid horseshoe-shaped mass of tooth material. The ancient historian also claimed that a skeleton was found of a Persian soldier who, when alive, would have stood between seven and eight feet tall.

What exactly these ancient Greek scavengers discovered on the battlefield of Plataea still remains a mystery. Did these ancients misidentify the bones? Did they unearth some sort of fossil? Did an ancient Persian soldier of seven feet in height really die at the Battle of Plataea? Either way, it is a characteristically odd, but interesting, story that you can expect from The Histories of Herodotus.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Greek hoplite and Persian warrior fighting each other. Depiction in ancient kylix. 5th c. BCE National Archaeological Museum of Athens, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• From The Histories by Herodotus (Book IX), translated by Aubrey De Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola (Penguin Classics, 2002).  
• https://www.ancient.eu/Plataea/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Plataea 

The Ancient Athenians Claimed A Great Snake Was A Guardian Of Their Acropolis

The sacred snake of Athens is an interesting topic of ancient Greece. The idea that a snake lived in the temple of Athena in Athens, and acted as a guard of the acropolis, apparently was prevalent before the Persians ravaged the city in 480 BCE, during the Greco-Persian Wars. The snake, interestingly enough, had a sweet tooth—it was regularly given offerings of honey-cakes. According to The Histories of Herodotus (c. 490-425/420 BCE), this snake influenced many Athenians to abandon their city before the Persians arrived. The majority of the city decided to flee and fight another day after the priests announced that the sacred snake was no longer eating the honey-cake offerings. They interpreted this to mean that Athena had forsaken the city, and had taken the snake with her from the acropolis when she left. When the Greco-Persian Wars were over and the citizens of Athens began to rebuild their acropolis, the sacred snake was said to have made a reappearance and resumed its role as a protector of the city. It supposedly lived in the Erechtheion (or Erechtheum), a temple built between 421-405 BCE, where it continued to eat offerings of honey-cakes.

The identity of the snake is a tricky subject. It was definitely connected to Athena, and, according to myth, may have at one point in time been considered a human demigod. A popular theory is that the snake was connected to the ancient mythical king of Athens, Erechtheus. This king, supposedly raised by Athena, eventually achieved divinity and was worshiped beside the patron goddess of Athens in the acropolis. In an elaboration of this story, the sacred snake of Athens was sometimes seen to be a transformed version of Erechtheus. Other interpretations were that the snake was an incarnation of Erechtheus, or that the snake was a child of the deified king. Nevertheless, in the end, all we really know about Athens’ sacred snake is that it supposedly lived in the acropolis, had a fondness for honey-cakes, and was connected in some way to Athena and Erechtheus.

The enlarged picture below is of Athena standing next to a snake that swallowed Jason (of the Argonauts) when the hero was trying to take the Golden Fleece. The location of the scene is not at the acropolis of Athens, but hey, it contains Athena and a giant snake all in one piece of ancient art.

  (Jason regurgitated by a snake who keeps the Golden Fleece (center, hanging on the tree); Athena stands to the right. Red-figured cup by Douris, c. 480-470 BCE, discovered in Cerveteri (Etruria) and housed in the Vatican Museum, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

• The Histories by Herodotus, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt and revised by John Marincola. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002. 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Erechtheum 
• http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/content/erechtheion 
• https://www.ancient.eu/Erechtheion/ 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Erechtheus-Greek-mythology 
• http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/erechtheus.html