We bring you yet another sweep through the ancient Greece which shaped art, science, politics, and sport. From ostracism ballots and shouting elections to nude gymnasiums and communal showers, these vignettes show how Greeks lived, worshipped, governed, and played. You’ll meet philosophers who redefined nature, engineers who tunneled through mountains, artists who fooled birds with painted grapes, and women who bent the rules of property, medicine, and law. Taken together, these snapshots reveal a culture both familiar and startling, still echoing through our language, cities, and ideas today.
New here? Start with 40 Fascinating Facts about Greeks – Part 1.
1 Greek Statues Painted in Color
In classical Greece, artists painted statues and temples in vivid pigments, including reds, blues, and golds. The colors faded over centuries as weather and sunlight stripped away the paint, leaving only bare white marble. Because of that loss, later generations mistakenly assumed Greek art was meant to be pure white.
2. In 5th-century BC Athens, citizens could hold an annual vote to decide whether to conduct ostracism and then scratch a name on pottery shards called ostraka. The city used this process to neutralize potential tyrants or dangerously popular figures, and the person with the most votes had to leave Athens for 10 years. The term “ostracize” comes from those shards, and the practice ran roughly from 487 to 416 BC.
3. Around 460 to 370 BC, the Greek philosopher Democritus asked what matter was made of and argued that everything could be broken down into extremely small units. He called these units atoms, believing they combined and separated to form all material things. Although his idea lacked experimental proof at the time, it became the earliest known form of atomic theory and influenced scientific thought centuries later.
4. In the 2nd century AD, Lucian of Samosata wrote A True Story, a satirical tale that unexpectedly became the world’s first science-fiction narrative. The story follows travelers who are swept beyond Earth and land on the Moon, encountering aliens, mechanical beings, and artificial environments. Though meant as parody, Lucian’s vivid imagination foreshadowed themes of space exploration and technology nearly two millennia before modern science fiction.
5. The absurdly stubborn Black Knight from Monty Python was directly inspired by a real Greek wrestler named Arrichion of Phigalia, who refused to give up in a brutal match. Locked in a deadly hold, Arrichion kept fighting until he died during the struggle. As Arrhichion was about to be subdued, he managed to wrench his rival’s ankle, forcing a surrender, even though he then collapsed and died. The judges declared him the winner despite his death, making him perhaps the only athlete in Olympic history to win a contest posthumously.
6 Marathon Nemesis from Persian Marble
In 490 BC, the Persian army brought a huge block of Parian marble to the Battle of Marathon, intending to carve a monument to their expected victory over the Greeks. After the Persians lost, the Athenians captured the stone and used it to create a colossal statue of Nemesis for her sanctuary at Rhamnous, the goddess who cuts down those with too much pride. The defeated army’s would-be victory monument instead became a lasting reminder of Persian hubris and Greek revenge.
7. In ancient Greece, sculptors created a strange statue type called the “herm,” which put a head on top of a plain, squared stone pillar. Below it, instead of a full body, the only other carved detail was a set of male genitals placed at the right height on the otherwise flat shaft.
8. In the later Classical era, women in Sparta controlled an estimated 35 percent of the city’s land and property, an exceptional level of ownership in the Greek world. When a Spartan husband died, often in battle, his land and goods passed to his widow rather than to the oldest male relative. This flow of inheritance gave Spartan women substantial economic power and helped them live with a public presence and authority that most ancient women never approached.
9. In the ancient Greek world, the word “Bible” simply meant “book” or “scroll” rather than a specific holy text. The term came from Byblos, a Phoenician port city that served as the main hub where Egyptians exported papyrus to Greece. As papyrus shipments flowed through Byblos, its name transferred to the writing material itself, leaving a permanent mark on the Greek word for “book.”
10. In 408 BC in Athens, the actor Hegelochus performed in a play named Orestes. He mispronounced a key word and turned “after the storm I see again a calm sea” into “after the storm I see again a weasel,” a blunder that audiences seized on immediately. Comic poets such as Sannyrion mocked him, and the mistake stuck so firmly with people then that his name survives today as a punchline for stage errors.
11 Greek Gyms Trained Completely Nude
In ancient Greece, men trained in gymnasiums where they were required to exercise completely naked. These spaces were reserved exclusively for men, and athletes displayed their bare bodies as a way to celebrate the male physique before the gods. The ritual of nude training tied everyday exercise to ideals of male beauty and religious devotion in Greek culture.
12. In 2001, hair stylist Janet Stephens visited a museum and studied the intricate hairstyles carved on Greek and Roman statues. She realized that historians were wrong to describe these towering styles as wigs and went on to recreate them herself using real hair. She then published her methods and findings in The Journal of Roman Archaeology, transforming herself from a working stylist into a hairstyle archaeologist presenting her reconstructions to scholars.
13. In ancient Rome, some slave owners tried to stop escapes by tattooing warnings like “Stop me! I am a runaway!” directly onto their slaves’ foreheads. The message turned each enslaved person into a walking notice. At a temple of the Greek god of healing, archaeologists have found thousands of inscribed tablets from escaped slaves begging the god to make these forehead tattoos disappear.
14. In ancient Greece, prostitution was divided into two classes: the Pornai and the Hetairai. The Pornai worked publicly, often serving many men at once in brothels or on the streets. The Hetairai, however, were educated courtesans who entertained wealthy men with conversation, culture, and intimacy, making them companions as much as lovers.
15. In ancient Greece, the Iliad and the Odyssey were only two parts of a larger eight-poem tradition known as the Epic Cycle, written by several different authors. While the rest of the cycle has survived only in fragments and summaries, Homer’s two works were copied, performed, and taught so widely that they remained intact. Their popularity helped erase the others, leaving Homer’s epics as the surviving core of what was once a much larger mythic series.
16 Greeks Dismiss Paid Employment
In classical Greece, many citizens viewed paid employment as degrading because it took time away from leisure, politics, education, and culture. Writers described work as a necessary evil rather than a positive good. This attitude limited the rise of a wage-earning class, so most labor fell to slaves, with paid work appearing mainly in seasonal agriculture and in some military and government roles.
17. In the Thessaly region of Ancient Greece, a female astronomer named Aglaonice earned a reputation as a sorceress who could “draw down the moon.” She and her circle probably timed lunar eclipses with studied precision, letting the moon’s darkening sell the illusion of magic. The feat cemented her fame as the leader of a Thessalian coven.
18. In the 4th century BC, Agnodice of Athens cut her hair, dressed as a man, and studied medicine under Herophilus, as laws barred women from the profession. She treated women who avoided male physicians, grew popular, and rival doctors accused her of seducing patients. Her patients openly defended her expertise when she came out as a woman during her trial before the Areopagus. The court acquitted her, and Athens revoked the ban on female physicians.
19. In 4th century BC Athens, Phryne of Thespiae, a celebrated hetairan prostitute, stood trial for impiety with the orator Hypereides as her defender. According to later accounts, the defense swayed from a death sentence when she showed the jury (all males) her breasts and argued that it would be a crime against the gods to destroy something so beautiful. The jury acquitted her, and the episode echoed through art and literature, inspiring Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1861 painting “Phryne Before the Areopagus.”
20. In ancient Greece, law required any midwife to have given birth. That rule shut men out of the profession because they could not meet the prerequisite. As a result, childbirth care remained in the hands of experienced mothers who assisted labor and delivery.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Greek Statues Showcase Modesty Ideals
In ancient Greek sculptures, ideal male beauty emphasized youth, self-control, and proportion, not display. Artists carved statues with small, relaxed genitals because they symbolized modesty and rational character. Large genitals were linked to satyrs, barbarians, and figures ruled by appetite, so they were considered vulgar rather than admirable.
22. In classical Greek theater, playwrights kept deaths out of sight, so killings almost never happened on stage. After the fatal act occurred offstage, a messenger entered to describe what happened, and the body appeared only afterward for the audience to witness. The convention focused attention on words, judgment, and consequences rather than on staged violence.
23. In 5th century BC Athens, the philosopher Anaxagoras studied the sky and argued that the moon was a rocky body that reflects sunlight, which let him explain phases and eclipses. His claim treated the moon and sun as natural objects, not gods, and his enemies used impiety charges to strike at his ally Pericles. A court sentenced Anaxagoras to death, but Pericles secured his release, and the philosopher spent his remaining years in exile at Lampsacus.
24. After the famed ancient Greek athlete Theagenes of Thasos died, a resentful rival took to beating his statue. The statue toppled during one of these attacks and crushed the man to death. City authorities tried the statue for murder, found it guilty, and punished it by casting it into the sea.
25. The famous U.S. Postal Service line “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” is actually a translation from ancient Greek historian Herodotus. He used the phrase around 500 BC to describe mounted Persian couriers who relayed messages across the empire with remarkable speed.
RE: Fact #24 (Theagenes Statue Tried for Murder) – Sounds like that statue was just defending itself! Though, I guess self-defense might not count for statues – maybe it’s the statue of limitations?
Haha, take my like and get outta here!
RE: Fact #19 (Phryne Acquitted After Revealing Beauty) – There aren’t many perfect breasts out there though
RE: Fact #13 (Roman Runaway Tattoos and Prayers) – They also had slave collars with tags. One found by archeologists said, “I have fled. Return me to my master, Zoninus, for one gold coin.”
It’s really tough to see physical evidence of things like this. I can barely wrap my head around a time when treating another person worse than an animal was considered normal.
RE: Fact #7 (Herm Pillars with Carved Genitals) – Doesn’t sound like a name a horny person would pick if they just wanted a di*k on a rock but thought it might be too obvious.
RE: Fact #24 (Theagenes Statue Tried for Murder) – But wait, there’s more! Later on, Thasos got hit with famine and plague. The people went to the oracle, and they were told to let all the exiles come back. They did that, but the crops still wouldn’t grow. So, they asked the oracle again. The priestess said they’d forgotten about the great Theagenes. Some fishermen brought back his statue, and the people of Thasos put it back where it used to be. Then they sacrificed to him, treating him like a god who could heal them.
Wow, people really didn’t know much back then. They were making choices based on superstition instead of science. It’s good we’ve gotten past that as a society.
It’s pretty wild how the ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans, were so advanced in math and science for their time. They were actually looking into harmonics, which is something scientists still use in astrophysics today. They were super superstitious, yeah, but that didn’t stop them from being pretty smart scientifically.
Seriously! A statue that’s killed someone is clearly dangerous. You should either try to appease it with offerings or get a skilled sorcerer to get rid of the spirits. Putting it on trial and throwing it in the ocean is just asking for more trouble.
RE: Fact #43 (Athens Lottery Chooses 500 Lawmakers) – Yeah, honestly, maybe just regular folks could do a better job. It’s pretty clear those politicians who are bought by big corporations and rich folks are doing a really bad job. Or, what if we just outlawed money in politics altogether? Then, maybe laws that most people want would actually get passed, instead of just the ones the wealthy push for.
RE: Fact #15 (Epic Cycle Beyond Homer) – In a thousand years, people will probably only remember the Prequel Trilogy from Star Wars.
RE: Fact #3 (Democritus Proposes Atomic Theory) – If I remember right, the word “atom” comes from the Greek “a tomos,” meaning “without cutting.” It’s pretty mind-blowing that someone 2,500 years ago could have such a forward-thinking idea, especially since nuclear fission later proved that notion wrong.
It’s a pretty logical idea. Basically, the thought was, “I can cut this thing in half. Then I can cut that half in half. If I keep doing this forever, eventually there has to be a point where I can’t cut it in half anymore.” And honestly, that’s pretty much right on. Sure, nuclear fission is a thing, but you still can’t just have half an atom.
It’s interesting to think that Democritus’ original idea of atoms actually fits pretty well with what we know about quarks today. Maybe the issue is more with how modern chemistry has changed our understanding of what an atom is.
We had Dalton, who pretty much took Democritus’ concept and added scientific evidence and reasoning. Then, scientists like Thomson, Rutherford, and Chadwick showed us that atoms themselves are made of even smaller parts. And even some of those smaller parts, like protons and neutrons, can be broken down further into fundamental particles. Last I heard, quarks are thought to be indivisible, but who knows, maybe things have changed!
Yeah, you’re right. It would actually take way more energy to pull apart a pair of quarks than it would to just create a new pair.
RE: Fact #43 (Athens Lottery Chooses 500 Lawmakers) – This was just in the city of Athens, not all of Greece.
It’s surprising how many folks don’t know that Ancient Greece was actually a bunch of separate, independent city-states for ages, and they weren’t always on the same side. Sparta is probably the most well-known, thanks to that movie *300*, and they were all about military strength. So when the Persians showed up, it wasn’t like there was a single, united Greek army ready to defend the whole area.
Yeah, I don’t think Spartans actually had the top military game in Greece. I think Marathon or Macedonia were stronger, if I recall correctly. Spartans were definitely masters of making themselves look good and playing the political game, which is probably why they get that top military title these days.
I wonder if Sparta is more famous than Athens nowadays. Is that really where we’re at?
RE: Fact #28 (Apelles Favored by Alexander) – Yeah, not many paintings from ancient Greece have made it to today. We mostly have sculptures, which used to be painted, but the paint’s long gone, and then there are mosaics.
There was a plaque in the sand that just said, “Here is the greatest painting in the world. Weep at its beauty.”
Hey, so it turns out we only have four original ancient Greek paintings on wood, and they all came from the same spot in Corinth. Two of them are super broken up, and honestly, none of them are that amazing. All the really awesome Greek panel paintings are gone now.
RE: Fact #20 (Men Excluded from Greek Midwifery) – My wife’s midwife suggested I become a doula. I told her I only managed to stay in the room when my wife was literally gushing blood because she’s my wife. Otherwise, I would have fainted or gotten a concussion.
RE: Fact #5 (Arrichion Inspires Black Knight) – Yeah, Pankration was known for being a super intense sport back in the day. Pretty much the only things they didn’t allow were eye-gouging, hitting the groin, and killing the other guy. But in Sparta, they actually allowed eye-gouging and biting.
It’s funny how groin shots were still against the rules even back in Sparta. Like, you could gouge someone’s eyes out with your dirty fingernails, but no nut taps, seriously?
As a male Spartan, it was your duty to have kids and protect the interests of the military state.
Even animals have a no nut taps rule, and like humans, some of them break it.
RE: Fact #29 (Archimedes Last Words on Circles) – I recall reading that the soldiers were told to keep Archimedes alive because the Romans wanted his help. So, someone really messed up there.
RE: Fact #9 (Byblos Port Names the Bible) – Byblos is still around today in modern Lebanon, and it’s one of the oldest places on earth that people have lived in continuously.
RE: Fact #23 (Anaxagoras Declares Moon a Rock) – Wow, what a silly goose. Can you believe that?
Yeah, we all know it’s a dragon egg that’ll hatch when the old gods come back.
It’s pretty obvious it’s made of cheese.
You’re clearly making a joke with the benefit of looking back on things. Honestly, it’s most likely you would have kicked him out too. It really makes you wonder what choices we’re making right now that are as misguided as kicking Anaxagoras out.
I remember a comic where a grandpa 50 years in the future is asked if he owned “animal slaves.” He says, “Yes, everyone had pets!” Then he’s told he’s not supposed to say that word, and he insists they were pets and liked it. His kid then tells him it’s bedtime. It’s funny, but I can totally see future generations thinking it’s wrong to force animals into servitude for breeding or other purposes, even if we see it as symbiotic now.
RE: Fact #19 (Phryne Acquitted After Revealing Beauty) – The defense is here, your honor.
If the t*ts are real, you gotta let them go.
They’re real and they’re spectacular!
RE: Fact #10 (Hegelochus Weasel Stage Blunder) – Some folks think that if your name is forgotten by time and no one speaks it anymore, you can pass on to the afterlife. If that’s true, this dude’s having a really tough time.
There’s a movie called Wings of Fame where famous people go to a hotel in the afterlife. If you’re not famous anymore, you get moved to a smaller room. Things get worse until you’re kicked out into the void.
Looks like Hegelochus was about to get into Pearly Gates heaven, but then this factrepublic article popped up saying, “Ah, sorry Hegelochus, can’t let you in today …”
There was a soldier in the Persian army who was the first to climb over the walls of one of Cyrus the Great’s enemies. I remember finding his Wikipedia page, and it was only like two sentences long.
RE: Fact #12 (Janet Stephens Recreates Ancient Hairstyles) – She also showed a video about Forensic Hairdressing at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting. She’s a really amazing woman.
So, there was this really interesting talk where a woman explained how archaeologists found some small bones with grooves in them. To most academics, these bones didn’t seem to have any obvious use and were just labeled as being for “rituals” – a total shot in the dark, it turns out.
She immediately recognized the bone as a leatherworking tool, pretty much identical to what modern leather workers use.
Her main point was that more regular folks, especially those with experience in traditional trades, should get involved in archaeology.
When archaeologists say “ritual” about an artifact, it often means they’re not sure what it was used for. It’s more like saying “I don’t have a specific answer” rather than a definitive guess. Other archaeologists get that it’s a vague term when the exact rituals aren’t known.
RE: Fact #24 (Theagenes Statue Tried for Murder) – Love seeing stories like this because it really makes you realize that for most of history, young folks in their teens and twenties were the ones calling the shots.
Having a trial for a statue sounds *exactly* like something my goofy friends would pull off if we were in charge and had nothing better to do.
Man, that statue totally got Brian! Fu*k… Guess I’ll check out that new “trial” thing Henry’s been mentioning. Probably shouldn’t test it on an actual person for the first go, though.
RE: Fact #48 (Eupalinos Tunnel Meets Midway) – So, over here where I live, there are two buildings that were supposed to get linked up with a bridge. They messed up and ended up connecting the third floor to the second floor instead.
At my university, they built a connecting bridge between two dorms, both on the second floor. Turns out, they didn’t realize one dorm counted the basement as floor 1, and the other counted it as B. It’s pretty awkward having to walk uphill on that bridge.
RE: Fact #27 (Six Greek Words for Love) – So that’s why Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love!
RE: Fact #33 (Akrasia Knowing Yet Not Doing) – That word totally gets my whole life. Even just getting out of bed feels like a huge effort.
RE: Fact #32 (Polybius and the Government Cycle) – Polybius’s thoughts on Roman government are super interesting to check out. He attempted to explain Rome’s fast growth during the Republic, believing it stemmed from his observation of a special government setup that blended elements of Monarchy, Oligarchy, and Democracy.
He saw the Consuls as an Executive role, pretty much like a King when it came to leading the army and making tough calls during emergencies. The Senate, he described as a Judicial branch that interpreted and ruled on laws, made up of wealthy and influential families who were the Oligarchs. And the Citizen Assemblies acted as a democratic part, voting on laws proposed by the other two and having the power to keep them in line.
This explanation was a major influence on the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution, if you haven’t come across that yet.
Now, it’s worth mentioning that the Roman system wasn’t flawless, and Polybius’s account gets some things wrong about how those parts actually functioned and worked together. But even so, it’s really cool stuff to read.
RE: Fact #12 (Janet Stephens Recreates Ancient Hairstyles) – Wow, I learned something totally out of the blue today. Good job factrepublic, you redeemed yourself for today.
We’re still in the early stages, so let’s not jump to conclusions.
RE: Fact #11 (Greek Gyms Trained Completely Nude) – My health club has this tradition that’s still going strong with the older guys there.
RE: Fact #28 (Apelles Favored by Alexander) – Yeah, you’d have to really admire someone to even think about giving them your concubine.
RE: Fact #42 (Spartan Politics by Shouting Elections) – Similar to how they do “voice votes” in the US House of Representatives, where the Speaker just decides based on what they think sounds louder.
Yeah, but that’s usually for votes on procedures or things that aren’t a big deal. Most of the time, the side that’s losing wants the votes to be recorded as yay or nay.
RE: Fact #22 (Offstage Deaths in Greek Theater) – They had a cart to put the body on, which they’d attach to a rope on the other side of the stage. Then they’d pull it, making the body look like it was gliding across. This was one of the earliest special effects! A big reason for doing it this way was that they expected only a certain number of actors on stage at once, and a corpse didn’t count towards that limit, so they didn’t have to waste an actor slot. And the messenger was literally just a guy who’d come out and shout what happened from offstage, just like a typical messenger would.
RE: Fact #26 (Nero Wins Rigged Greek Olympics) – So, picture this: you’re in a 100m sprint, and Nero’s one of the runners. Let’s say you’re actually a really good runner. How much would you hold back to let him win? He might figure out you’re faking it, and that could be insulting. But if you win, you’re gonna be in hot water too.
At that point, you could just fake an injury or actually sprain your ankle to give yourself a reason for not finishing the race. That way, you don’t look bad for performing poorly, the emperor doesn’t lose face by having someone quit on him, and hopefully everyone stays safe. You could always say you were trying so hard to impress the emperor that you accidentally rolled your ankle or something. As long as you flatter his ego, you should be fine.
Nero apparently sang too, and by all accounts, he was awful! Can you imagine hearing him sing completely terrible verses and trying to keep a straight face?
RE: Fact #38 (Astypalaia Hosts Oldest Erotic Graffiti) – Why do I feel like this is the original “I fu*ked your girl”?
Timiona is thought to be male. It also mentions that in ancient Greece, sexual desire between men wasn’t frowned upon. The graffiti found is considered one of the earliest ever discovered. The use of the past continuous verb tense apparently indicates that the two men were making love for an extended period, highlighting the sexual act in a very unusual way for erotic art.
So, correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t ancient Greek female names typically end with an -a or -e? If it was actually a guy, wouldn’t the name be something like “Timion” or “Timionos”?
Reminds me of that old joke where the ancient Greeks invented sex, but the ancient Romans figured out you could do it with women.
RE: Fact #12 (Janet Stephens Recreates Ancient Hairstyles) – She recreated the Vestal Virgins priestess style mentioned in this article. She said it takes about 40 minutes and shared a video showing how to do it.
RE: Fact #10 (Hegelochus Weasel Stage Blunder) – When I say something dumb, I always say “At least I’m not Hegelochus!”
RE: Fact #3 (Democritus Proposes Atomic Theory) – Wow, he even got the name right?
My mom used to tell a silly joke when I asked about my name. She’d say, “Well, we guessed, and the doctor said we got it right!”
Yeah, he actually called them atomos, but the scientists who found them later on changed that to atoms.
Atomo means “something that cannot be split” in Greek.
Chemists did, but they kinda went overboard. Atoms are made of things like quarks and electrons.
RE: Fact #45 (Aristotle Mentioned Early Bedbugs) – So, should the saying be “sleep tight, use bean leaves to make sure the bedbugs don’t bite”?
RE: Fact #47 (Pythagoreans Feared Number Seventeen) – Yeah, and they also took out the guy who showed irrational numbers are a thing, plus Pythagoras himself was on the run from enemies because he refused to run through a bean patch, thinking beans looked like testicles. So, maybe don’t put too much faith in them.
RE: Fact #44 (Vinegar Honey Spiderweb Wound Care) – Honey is antibacterial because its high sugar content creates osmotic pressure on bacteria, making water leave their cells.
Yeah, I think that’s how mince pies stayed good for so long, right? Because of all the sugar in them?
Also, the reason honey doesn’t go bad is just that it dries out instead.
If it has too much moisture, it could be a problem.
RE: Fact #7 (Herm Pillars with Carved Genitals) – So, basically, Plato’s buddy Alcibiades apparently got drunk and went around chopping off the dicks of these statues. It’s known as ‘The Desecration Of The Herms’, and it’s one of the few things I remember from my college Plato class.
You should totally check out Alcibiades if you’re looking for an ancient version of that “most interesting man in the world” vibe. Just a taste of his crazy life: he had lots of lovers, both guys and girls, and was a respected military leader. He pushed Athens to invade Sicily, then got accused of a desecration that was considered a terrible omen for that very invasion. On his way to face trial, he bailed and went to Sparta, where he advised their military. One of their queens even had a kid who was probably his. Then he moved on to Persia, then back to Athens, and had a bunch of other wild adventures before he died.
I guess this is what I missed out on by reading Plato on my own instead of taking that ancient philosophy class.
RE: Fact #43 (Athens Lottery Chooses 500 Lawmakers) – Only 500 men who owned land were allowed to vote, not women, slaves, or peasants.
factrepublic is the only place where people comment on how folks from over 2200 years ago weren’t progressive enough by today’s standards.
Yep, that’s pretty much how ruling worked for pretty much forever until the last hundred years or so.
RE: Fact #18 (Agnodice Becomes Disguised Female Physician) – Back in ancient Greece, showing she was a woman wouldn’t really prove she didn’t go after other women.
Back in ancient Greece, women were mainly for having kids, and men were for romance.
In ancient Athens, it seems like it would have been pretty wild for a guy to try and sweet-talk a woman. I guess they were so down on women, they were into guys instead.
These guys were so misogynistic, they ended up being gay. So this is the next move for those “redpill” types. They’re calling it “rainbowpill” now.
Yeah, it’s more like women were treated as property back then. So it’s not cool to try and get someone’s cow to just come with you without their owner’s permission; you should actually buy it from them first.
RE: Fact #21 (Greek Statues Showcase Modesty Ideals) – So if you’re a grower, not a shower, does that mean you’re a “Greek in the streets and vulgar in the sheets?”
Eros in the streets, Minotaur in the sheets
RE: Fact #49 (Zeuxis Versus Parrhasius Illusion Contest) – My uncle said he reeled in a catfish that was three feet long.
RE: Fact #16 (Greeks Dismiss Paid Employment) – When we look at what’s written in the original sources, it’s pretty much the aristocracy chatting amongst themselves. So, it’s definitely worth keeping that in mind when we read it.
Yeah, Socrates, why work when you have slaves for that?
Why bother working when robots and AI can do it for us these days?
Back then, society also depended on slave labor.
If my pastor’s teachings are anything to go by, around 90% of people in ancient Rome were slaves. So, being a Roman citizen was really important back then.
RE: Fact #17 (Aglaonice Predicts Lunar Eclipses) – Just so you know, the idea that they were actually astronomers who convinced people they were witches by predicting eclipses isn’t some new theory. Plutarch, who’s from ancient times himself, mentioned this.
That’s helpful context, thanks
So, a woman does some science stuff, and suddenly, religious guys from way back start calling her a witch.
Also, get this: They built a computer that did the same thing around 100 BC. Hipparchus figured out how to calculate them from Babylonian observations way back in 150 BC.
Seriously, how did people back then not have the sense to build an iPad and write Java code to do it for them?
RE: Fact #39 (Theban Sacred Band of Lovers) – They were undefeated until the Battle of Chaeronea, where they all died. This battle was the end of Greece’s strong position.
The monument built to honor them survived and was found in modern times. Excavations showed 300 male graves, which cleared up doubts about who it was for.
Phillip II had to send his entire cavalry force against them to win. After seeing their bodies all over the battlefield, he said something like, “May anyone who thinks these guys either did or suffered something shameful perish.”
Haha, scholars be like “huh, looks like these guys were super close buddies.”
This battle marked the fall of the Greek strong position, depending on whether you see the ancient Macedonians as Greeks.
RE: Fact #37 (Praxiteles Aphrodite of Knidos Scandal) – Seriously, can you imagine how wild that change must have felt? For ages, if you wanted to see a naked woman, you had to actually get one to agree, and then boom – you could just head to the temple and see t*ts all the time.
Yeah, trying to find adult movies before the internet was a hassle if you didn’t have HBO.
RE: Fact #30 (Xerxes Canal Bypasses Mount Athos) – It’s pretty wild that we know for sure his name was Xerxes and it was around 480 BC. That’s a really specific date, even with “around” thrown in. Or am I missing something?
RE: Fact #25 (Herodotus Line Inspires Postal Creed) – The Histories by Herodotus is seriously one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.
RE: Fact #15 (Epic Cycle Beyond Homer) – I always share this with my Greek myth students! It’s super important for getting the full picture of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and for understanding how myths and storytelling worked back in ancient Greece. My favorite thing to teach about the Epic Cycle is showing that one of the most famous parts of the Trojan War – you know, the thing with the horse – actually isn’t in the Iliad at all. It’s only told as a story within a story in the Odyssey. The whole Trojan horse bit shows up in something called the Little Iliad.
RE: Fact #44 (Vinegar Honey Spiderweb Wound Care) – Were they harvesting spiders to make honey bandages? That’s pretty cool!
Spider webs also have stuff that stops blood from clotting.
This reminds me of old EverQuest, when you had to farm spider silk to make bandages. I always thought that was weird, but now I know it was historically accurate.
RE: Fact #23 (Anaxagoras Declares Moon a Rock) – He got the last laugh, really. Everyone who kicked him out ended up dying.
RE: Fact #32 (Polybius and the Government Cycle) – It makes a lot of sense to think about things in cycles when you’re living in a pre-industrial society. Pretty much anything you could imagine or guess about in that kind of world has likely happened before and will probably happen again. Countries go up and down, culture shifts one way and then swings back the other way as a reaction.
The reasons behind most events don’t really change, so those events keep repeating. There’s always a new conqueror, a new hero, a new leader, and so on. On a smaller level, your family might have done the same kind of work for generations and will probably keep doing it for generations to come.
These ideas don’t quite fit today because what’s possible keeps changing. So, the ways we try to understand human existence have to account for that constant shift. Now, they mostly seem to fall into two groups: Modernism, which is the idea that society is always getting better and moving forward, and Post-Modernism, which suggests society might be moving, but not necessarily forward – more like chaotically, without much logic.
If technological progress slows down a lot in the future, we might start seeing things cyclically again. Like a loop, just a bit more advanced than the one we got out of thanks to the industrial revolution.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but the Industrial Revolution happened less than 200 years ago, and its big societal impacts are even more recent. It might be a bit early to claim we’ve escaped the cycles that other civilizations seem to have gone through.
Ozymandias would have something to say about that.
I’m not so sure. I think technology is changing things a lot right now, but eventually, we’ll probably fall back into some cycles similar to the past, just on a bigger scale, maybe even global. I feel like people put too much stock in modern times being totally different from before, but we’re still just apes, you know?
RE: Fact #27 (Six Greek Words for Love) – Yeah, the word “love” is kinda tricky. It gets used for so many different things, and it’s hard to tell what someone really means just from the situation.
I get what you’re saying. The word “love” really does carry a lot of weight. I say it to my best friend, parents, spouse, and kids, and it means something different for each of them. And when you think about how many ways there are to call someone a jerk in English, it’s wild that “love” has to cover so many bases.
The only way to sort this out is with some firm decisions.
Since “jerk” has so many unnecessary synonyms, let’s try a new approach with it. To show you love kids, you can now say “jerk” instead. For example: “I jerk you.”
And that’s another step toward solving the love issue.
RE: Fact #1 (Greek Statues Painted in Color) – So, my boyfriend was at the Vatican, and the tour guide mentioned that some of the statues there got bleached way back when. Apparently, the Pope back then was all about making them look super white and clean, getting rid of any paint flakes that were left.
And then another pope went around chipping off their private parts, apparently because seeing a bunch of stone penises as he walked down the halls was a bit too tempting.
Then they had the idea to cover up the unsightly parts with little leaves.
So, when they were digging around Pompeii, they found a whole lot of phalluses – on signs, statues, and even as good luck charms. The Victorians ended up collecting them, and apparently, there’s a whole storeroom somewhere filled with ancient phalluses.
Yeah, it makes sense. A bunch of statues with paint chipped for a thousand years would probably look pretty rough.
I’d rather have a white statue than something that looks like M&M’s vomit.
It’s kind of like how one of the Popes had all the genitals chiseled off the Vatican statues.
RE: Fact #29 (Archimedes Last Words on Circles) – He also invented a bunch of amazing weapons during that siege to protect his city. As the Romans finally sailed into the harbor, the defenders supposedly used arrays of mirrors to concentrate sunlight on the incoming ships and ignite them. That’s how the concept of the “Archimedes Array” got started.
So, apparently Archimedes didn’t actually use mirrors to burn down Roman ships like the story goes. The article I read mentioned it would’ve been way too hard to get that many mirrors lined up perfectly back in 214 BC. It’s pretty wild though, thinking about how they use like 24,000 mirrors now to focus sunlight and make electricity at that solar power plant. Pretty neat stuff.
RE: Fact #31 (Argos Oldest Inhabited European City) – Just so you know, folks think Jericho is the oldest city ever, lived in for at least 11,000 years straight.
RE: Fact #22 (Offstage Deaths in Greek Theater) – So, the Greek word for stage was “skene,” which is actually where we get our word “scene” from. And get this, the Latin word “obscaena” means “off-stage.” That’s where we get “obscene” – basically, something that’s not supposed to be seen.
This is why I keep coming back here. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
RE: Fact #34 (Ancients Collected Athlete Sweat Gloios) – Yeah, people still do that with jerseys and shoes that players have worn.
RE: Fact #35 (How Barbarian Got Its Name) – So in Arabic, there’s this verb that actually comes from Greek, and it’s kind of like that. It’s “يبربر,” and it means someone is babbling or talking in a way you just can’t understand.
RE: Fact #48 (Eupalinos Tunnel Meets Midway) – Yeah, I’ve heard that a one-degree miss can put you about 17 meters off course after just a kilometer.
RE: Fact #27 (Six Greek Words for Love) – I don’t think “Ludus” is a Greek word for love. It actually means “play” or “sport” in Latin. It was also the name for the place where gladiators trained. Because, you know, nothing says “love” like trapping someone in a net and stabbing them with a trident in front of a huge crowd.
Also, “Storge,” which is familial love, is missing from the list.
RE: Fact #20 (Men Excluded from Greek Midwifery) – This seems like one of those strange logical laws that just clicks and feels super odd all at once.
The ancient Greeks seem to have really believed in practicing what they preached.
Yeah, it totally makes sense when you think about it. They didn’t exactly have a formal science or academic system back then to help pass down knowledge in a more abstract way.
Yeah, like, soldiers should totally be trained and led by veterans, right? You want someone who’s actually been through the stuff to guide others. So, it makes sense that midwives should be people who’ve gone through it themselves. Sounds pretty reasonable, at least for ancient Greece!
The midwife is described as someone who “delivers all those, and those only, who do not deliver themselves.” The question is, can a midwife deliver herself?
I reckon the government minister for the armed forces should’ve had some frontline experience, the health minister should’ve been a doctor or nurse, the education minister a teacher, and the culture minister should’ve had to try putting on shows. And so on.
During lockdown, it was awful. 3.6 million people in the UK were self-employed, and they basically considered abandoning us because none of those ministers had ever been self-employed. My own job was actually illegal for 9 months.
So, the VA has this job called a peer support specialist. To get it, you need to be a veteran who’s currently using or has used mental health services through the VA. Basically, it’s a paid role where they put veterans who understand the system to talk to other vets about their experiences.
RE: Fact #34 (Ancients Collected Athlete Sweat Gloios) – Go on and get jealous, Belle Delphine
RE: Fact #6 (Marathon Nemesis from Persian Marble) – Pausanias, who lived around 110 to 180 CE, wrote about this. That’s over 600 years after Marathon, so he probably just made it up to make Darius seem arrogant.
So you’re saying I can’t just write about the battle of Agincourt and expect it to be considered history?
It’s pretty funny how people are fact-checking ancient Greeks online now. Back then, just having it in a book was probably enough for most people to believe it. Now, you’re basically putting them on the Maury show. That’s intense!
RE: Fact #29 (Archimedes Last Words on Circles) – Looks like this time the pen didn’t win out over the sword.
You don’t know the soldier’s name, but you know the mathematician. The pen is mightier than the sword.
RE: Fact #15 (Epic Cycle Beyond Homer) – Seriously, the books are so much better than the plays.
It’s true, the books alone don’t give you the full picture. To really get what they’re about, you’d need to go back and read the original Aramaic tablets.
RE: Fact #2 (Athenian Ostracism by Ostraka) – Yeah, it’s not just politicians who could get ostracized. Any regular person could face that too.
You could even manipulate an election to get someone booted out.
Just give me 500 gold coins, and I’ll make sure they don’t need voting. There’s no line anymore.
RE: Fact #33 (Akrasia Knowing Yet Not Doing) – Modern Greeks don’t really have that word anymore, thanks to their drive and strong sense of self-reliance.
RE: Fact #10 (Hegelochus Weasel Stage Blunder) – It’s like that super embarrassing thing that happened in third grade, the kind that still makes you wake up in a cold sweat every couple of years, even after 2,500 years.
That’s a good point. I usually tell myself that people are way more worried about their own stuff than what I’m doing, and that they’ll totally forget about any embarrassing moments super quickly. This story is making me question that whole idea, though.
RE: Fact #11 (Greek Gyms Trained Completely Nude) – I’m pretty sure “Gymnasium” is Greek for “naked exercising.”
Yep, gymnos means naked.
“Asium” basically means bare ass.
RE: Fact #34 (Ancients Collected Athlete Sweat Gloios) – People would totally still buy that stuff now.
RE: Fact #26 (Nero Wins Rigged Greek Olympics) – I totally crushed it. No one stood a chance against me. I won so huge, the organizers even told me, “Nero, we’ve never seen anyone win as big as you.”
RE: Fact #26 (Nero Wins Rigged Greek Olympics) – This makes me think of that scene in The Dictator where Aladeen is in a race but has a gun.
RE: Fact #31 (Argos Oldest Inhabited European City) – Hey, so this isn’t quite right. Apparently, this place has been going back and forth between being a village and a city for 7,000 years. The actual oldest city in Europe is supposed to be Cádiz, over in Spain.
RE: Fact #14 (Pornai and Hetairai Explained) – I read porn and hentai. Real classy, huh?
RE: Fact #25 (Herodotus Line Inspires Postal Creed) – People often think the Postal Service has a motto, and it’s actually a nice nod to postal workers. Those famous words, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” aren’t an official motto. They’re inscribed in granite over the entrance of the New York City Post Office on 8th Avenue. They actually come from a book called The Persian Wars, written by Herodotus. The Persians had a postal courier system back then that was known for being really reliable.
The New York General Post Office was designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1914. One of the architects, William Mitchell Kendall, loved reading Greek. He chose that “Neither snow nor rain…” phrase, tweaking it from a translation by Professor George Herbert Palmer. The Post Office Department went with it.
There’s another, less famous inscription on the building that used to be the Washington, D.C., Post Office and is now the National Postal Museum. It’s on Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Street, N.E. It says:
Messenger of Sympathy and Love
Servant of Parted Friends
Consoler of the Lonely
Bond of the Scattered Family
Enlarger of the Common Life
Carrier of News and Knowledge
Instrument of Trade and Industry
Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance
Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations.
The original for this one was called “The Letter” and was written by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, who used to be president of Harvard. President Woodrow Wilson made a few small changes before it was carved into the white granite of that Post Office.
RE: Fact #50 (Mani Peninsula Piracy Tradition) – Yeah, Spartan kids were supposed to basically steal food to get by.
Spartan society was pretty rough for most of its history.
Even though Sparta had those amazing warriors, they eventually went down. Being next to peaceful places like Athens really highlighted that life didn’t have to be so rough if you just left. We see this happening all the time now – if things are bad, people will bail, especially if there’s nothing stopping them.
Man, the way the male Spartans were raised sounds absolutely wild, like a constant stream of terrible stuff happening. If you read that in a dystopian teen novel, you’d probably think it was way too over-the-top and unbelievable because of all the cruelty.
If they were adults, fighting side-by-side in a formation where the whole group’s strength depended on everyone pulling their weight, it honestly didn’t seem like such a bad deal.
RE: Fact #16 (Greeks Dismiss Paid Employment) – Most of the ancient Greek writing we still have today comes from wealthy landowners in a society where slavery was common. These folks had the free time and resources to focus on things like politics and culture.
RE: Fact #33 (Akrasia Knowing Yet Not Doing) – I’m not lazy, I just struggle with acting on my intentions!
The Akratic Method: For when the Socratic method is just too much.
RE: Fact #36 (Ancient Communal Showers in Greece) – It’s wild to think the ancient Greeks were the first ones to have showers! They had these awesome aqueducts and even lead pipes for sewage, which let them pump water into and out of big public shower rooms. Everyone, from the fancy folks to regular people, could use them. They’ve even found these shower rooms at a place called Pergamum, and there are drawings on old pottery that look a lot like modern locker room showers, complete with places to hang clothes. The Romans totally picked up on this too, with their famous bathhouses all over the Mediterranean and even in places like England. They weren’t just showering, either – they were bathing super often, like several times a week or even daily. Sadly, all that cool water and sewage tech kind of disappeared after the Roman Empire fell.
RE: Fact #8 (Spartan Women Owned 35 Percent) – For Sparta, like with most things, this only really applied to a tiny fraction of the people there.
The aristocracy in Sparta would be the same way.
Yeah, but back in Sparta, only those specific people were called “citizens.” Nowadays, when folks hear that word, they tend to imagine it meant a lot more people in Sparta than it actually did.