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Category: Culture
What is the importance of the Hellenistic culture?
Thx4A2A, Anon. As my fellows have asked, we’ll need more detail on what you’re asking. I’m going to stab at a related question, which is the legacy of Hellenistic culture. In fact, that might be a good approach to vague questions like this, my fellow respondents: we grab a bit each of the possible answers […]
How and why does religiosity vary among Greek immigrant communities?
Question comes from my contrasting the attitude to religiosity among Greek-Australians and Greek-Americans. In the 1990s, Greeks were only coming up to second generation in Australia. The attitude to religion was akin to what it was in the home country: more about group identity and tradition than about a (how do Evangelicals put it?) personal […]
How come the concept of ‘homosexuality’ was not known in Ancient Greece (if it was in the Bible itself)?
Paul refers to ἀρσενοκοίτης, “sleeping with men”, which is an expression for the concept of homosexuality. Predating the modern term homosexuality. And indeed, which might well be rendered as “homosexuality”, even though it was not the word that Ancient Greeks used. There is a contrary opinion that it refers specifically to temple prostitution in Leviticus; […]
To whom Constantinople and Byzantium legacy belong to, Greece, Turkey or Bulgaria?
To anyone who claims it. I mean, seriously, what are you going to do? Sue the claimants you don’t like in the Hague? It belongs to the Greeks, who continue to call the City Constantinople and the empire Byzantine, Andrew Baird nothwithstanding, whose literary and church culture is suffused with Byzantium, and whose language if […]
Why were there (apparently) more homosexual men in Ancient Greece than today?
In traditional Modern Greek society, there was a stigmatised group of gay men: poustides. In traditional Ancient Greek society, there was a stigmatised group of gay men: kinaidoi. The stigma in antiquity was more about being a bottom (i.e. about power) than about having sex with males per se. What was not stigmatised was homosexual […]
What does ‘hydra-headed evils’ mean and from where does it originate?
The reference is to the Lernaean Hydra, a legendary monster in Greek Mythology that Hercules killed. The Hydra was a snake-like monster with many heads; and if you cut off one head, two more would grow in its place. As Nikos Tsiforos‘ humorous retelling of Greek Mythology put it, Hercules’ reaction when he observed this […]
Is there a “White Black” prototypical character in the Balkan, Turkish, Middle Eastern, or Arabic folklore or fairy tales?
Not aware of one in Greek folklore. Lots of Arapis in Greek fairy tales, filling the same niche as ogres and giants—sometimes benevolent, sometimes malicious, but always exotic. But not aware of White Arapis. Answered 2016-05-02 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Is-there-a-White-Black-prototypical-character-in-the-Balkan-Turkish-Middle-Eastern-or-Arabic-folklore-or-fairy-tales/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Cretic Critique I: Game of Thrones
SPOILERS, SEASONS 1–4. This was the Greek YouTube sensation of 2015: Κρητική Κριτική. Two guys recounting current US TV series in Cretan dialect. The conceit is that a Cretan villager is summarising TV shows he watches for his nephew on the phone—but he doesn’t quite get all the subtleties of what’s going on. The Cretic […]
How does it feel for a Greek born outside of Greece visiting Greece in the big cities, in the villages or in the islands of Greece in 2015/2016?
Hey, I qualify for that answer. January 2015, on my honeymoon. Was last in Greece 2008. Kinda sullen. My home town (Sitia, Eastern Crete): visibly a lot of shuttered shops. Noone in my extended family gave a crap about politics any more. Still a healthy nightlife and buzz in Salonica; in fact I had a […]
Why is profanity often based on bodily functions or God?
The point of profanity is to break social taboos to demonstrate intensity of emotion. Social taboos are real, so profanity has the desired effect of shock by messing with those taboos. Most societies have strong taboos around religion. Most societies have taboos about excretion, and a lot of societies have taboos about sex. The West […]