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Category: Literature
Who is the other Hades and which are their family ties?
In this episode of Quora Jeopardy!, I find that the source OP is drawing on (Dimitris Sotiropoulos’ answer to Who is the other Hades and which are their family ties?, see comments) does not necessarily lead to the conclusion he is positing. The answer is drawn from the first successful Google hit I got on […]
Was Procopius referring to second half of 6th century, when he says that “some of these rascals were still Animists” or much earlier times in Arabia ?
Procopius, de Bellis I xx: At about the time of this war Hellestheaeus, the king of the Aethiopians, who was a Christian and a most devoted adherent of this faith, discovered that a number of the Homeritae on the opposite mainland were oppressing the Christians there outrageously; many of these rascals were Jews, and many […]
How was Greek literature lost through time?
For documents to survive, they needed to be important enough to the copyists to keep recopying, as the technology of books was upgraded—from wax tablet to scroll to codex in capitals to codex in lower case. And they needed to be important enough to be copied multiple times, so that random destruction of books did […]
When did Orthodox Christians (normal citizens, not clergy) get access to the Bible?
I am not aware of any Orthodox ban on laypeople buying bibles, if they could afford them. It may or may not have been seen as odd before the invention of printing. The Greek Orthodox Church did have a massive problem with translating the Bible into Modern Greek, to the extent of getting a ban […]
Were the classical greek drama texts complete?
Given the addendum from OP: https://www.quora.com/Were-the-c… (which I’ve added to question details): The bulk of Ancient Greek drama that has survived has survived as part of the postclassical school curriculum, and has been transmitted through manuscript. Even so, we know that bits of the text that the authors must have written (for the text to […]
What are some of the names of the most important Ancient Greek newspapers?
Ah, Anon, Anon… A newspaper by any modern understanding of the concept presupposes widespread literacy, and, you know, paper. The Roman Acta Diurna were a daily gazette of government decisions published, Asterix style, in stone, and there may even have been equivalents in Greece for publishing what the assemblies had decided that day; but they […]
Which Greek author wrote the Labours of Hercules in Greek mythology?
You know, I don’t know. Luckily, Wikipedia does: Labours of Hercules. Some ancients tells us that Peisander of Camirus wrote the official account of the labours as an epic. Some other ancients (via Clement of Alexandria) tells us that Peisander got his material from some other guy called Pisinus of Lindus. Neither of these particularly […]
What was the status of black people in the Roman Empire?
I would like to take the opportunity afforded by this question, to translate the epigraph to Ptolemy’s Geography, which is included in the new edition. It might be Byzantine rather than Roman, but for these purposes, Byzantine can serve for Roman. And it illustrates that Romans looked down on all foreigners, not just ones with […]
Are there really 10 times as many ancient texts written in Ancient Greek as there are ancient texts written in Latin?
It’s kinda true; I’ve certainly seen the number cited multiple times—it was the guess around 1900, for scholars saying there was no point even attempting a dictionary of all of Greek, to rival the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. I work at the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, although it is not a dictionary per se, but an online […]
This is no Fun and Games, this is the Balkans!
Whenever a Greek wants to nod sagely about the mess that is and ever has been the Balkans (and to admit that they too are stuck in the mess), they’ll mutter Εδώ είναι Βαλκάνια δεν είναι παίξε–γέλασε. “This is no Fun and Games, this is the Balkans!” I was going to cite the bon mot, […]