Showing posts with label ancient greeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ancient greeks. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

What happens to us when we die? Will we recognise ourselves? Will we be re-united with those who have gone before?

Illustration from Dante's ‘Inferno’, the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem ‘Divine Comedy’, depicting thieves tormented in hell by serpents. Engraving by Gustave Dore, 1885. (Photo by Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images)
Updated today 16/05/2020 

What happens to us when we die? Will we recognise ourselves? Will we be re-united with those who have gone before? Since the time of the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, people have searched for answers to these questions – and others – about the afterlife. Here, historian Philip Almond investigates.


Last Judgment - Wikiquote

Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heavens; from Gustave Doré's illustrations to the Divine Comedy. image wikipedia

In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Venerable Bede tells us of King Edwin of Northumbria, in the year AD 627, contemplating acceptance of the Christian faith and discussing it with his friends and counsellors
. One of his chief men eloquently expressed our ignorance of our final destiny: he likened it to a sparrow flying into a lighted hall at one end and out at the other. 





While inside the hall, it is safe from the wintry tempest outside. But after a short time it disappears, “passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while,” he declared, “but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all”.

That we all die, we know. But of what may lie beyond our deaths we remain, like Edwin’s adviser, completely ignorant. And yet, since the time of the ancient Greeks and Hebrews, there has been a long and complex history of our imaginings about the afterlife, both after our individual deaths and after the end of history; a history of attempts to answer a series of perennial questions with which we have always grappled: Do we ‘survive’ death? 

Will we recognise ourselves? Will we be re-united with those we have left behind or those who have gone before? Will our actions in this life be punished or rewarded? Will we have an opportunity after death to make amends or change our ways? Will our lives continue immediately after death or do we have to wait for a final end to history? What kind of body might we have? Where will we be?


The last judgment photo: pinterest

For all we know, one, some, or none of these imaginings may be true. But whatever, the history of the afterlife is the history of our hopes that there will be something after death and of our fears that there will be nothing. And, granted that there is something rather than nothing, the history of the afterlife speaks to our dreams of eternal happiness, of our nightmares of eternal punishment, and of the myriad ways in which these have been inflicted over the centuries.


Heaven in Christianity - Wikipedia

Whether in Greece of the seventh century BC or in the ancient Israel of the same period, the fate of the dead was the same whether they were good or evil – a shadowy half-life in Hades beneath the Earth or its Hebrew equivalent Sheol

But by the time of the Christian era, there were two foundational narratives about the afterlife in western thought already weaving in and out of each other. In both cases, the vice or virtue of the deceased determined their fate. On the one hand, there was a narrative built around the anticipation that life will continue immediately after the death of each of us. At the point of death, it was thought, the soul will be weighed in the balance, be judged according to its virtue or vice and be sent to the bliss of Abraham’s Bosom (paradise) or be cast into the pit of Hades.


Papyrus from the 'Book of the Dead' depicting the weighing of souls. (Photo By DEA/G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)
On the other hand, there was another narrative, one that was driven by the expectation that our eternal destinies would be finally determined, not at the time of death, but at that time when history ends – when this world will be no more and when Christ returns to judge both the living and the dead on the Day of Judgment. Early Christians were less interested in life immediately after death and more focused on the imminent expectation of the return of Jesus in judgment. And then, there will be only two possible destinations for us. For Christ will bid the blessed among us to enter an eternity of bliss in heaven and will throw the damned among us into the everlasting fires of hell. And of the latter there will be many more than the former.  



With these two narratives in place, the history of the afterlife within the west became the history of a constantly fluid series of negotiations, contestations and compromises between these two versions of our futures after death. The majority held to the necessity of both. As the Christian tradition gained in social prestige and political power, the expectation of the imminent return of Christ faded into the background and the emphasis fell on life immediately after death. For those socially, politically or economically disenfranchised, the expectation of the imminent return of Christ remained at the forefront. When Christ returned, the oppressed would then receive their reward and the wicked their eternal comeuppance. 


Giotto last judgement Pinterest-

But what of resurrected bodies? To the non-Christian Greek intellectual elite of the first four centuries AD, the notion of the resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgment was absurd. Thus, St Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) had to deal seriously with a set of questions that he believed rightly were intended by Christianity’s cultivated despisers to ridicule his faith

Would aborted foetuses rise from the dead? What would be the size of resurrected foetuses and children? Would the bodies of the monstrous, the disfigured and the deformed be made perfect? What was the fate of those devoured by beasts, consumed by fire, drowned, or eaten by cannibals? What gender would the resurrected be?

St Augustine of Hippo. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
How much of any individual was needed to reconstitute ‘him’ on the Last Day was a question with which Thomas Aquinas was grappling in the 13th century and Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, was still wrestling in the 17th. Drawing on the biblical vision of the resurrection of the valley of bones (Ezekiel 37.1-14) and his own chemical experiments on the stable and long-lasting texture of bones, Boyle surmised that skeletal remains would ensure the identity of the post- and pre-resurrection bodies, God adding such other parts as he saw fit to restore the bodies.


The Last Judgement Flickr

From the beginning of the third century, the Christian tradition adopted the Greek tradition that individuals were composed of a mortal body and an immortal soul. This enabled sense to be made of the tension between the fate of the individual after death and after the Day of Judgment. It was the soul, it was argued, that survived between death and the Last Day, and it was the body that was resurrected on the Last Day and re-united with the soul. Thus, the history of the afterlife was also the history of the conflict between the body and the soul as the essence of what it is to be human; sometimes of the necessity of both, occasionally of the acknowledgement of the one to the exclusion of the other.

The Last Judgment, 1600-25, by Cornelis de Vos. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. (Photo by PHAS/UIG via Getty Images)
This opposition between body and soul was intellectually difficult to sustain. The distinction between body and soul was sufficiently fragile for the one to be likely to collapse into the other and the difference between the two made effectually redundant. The soul was given a ‘bodily’ status and the body a ‘spiritual’ one. On the one hand, it became necessary to accord to the soul the sort of ‘bodiliness’ that allowed it a geographical location after death either above or below the earth. As a result, it took on physical aspects – the soul was gendered, had rank and status. 

On the other hand, it was crucial to ‘spiritualise’ the body – to resurrect it not as it was at the point of death but in an ‘ideal’ form most suited to its enjoyment of the delights of heaven or to its suffering of the pains of hell. A ‘spiritual’ body at least had the virtue of avoiding difficulties inherent in the notion of a resurrected physical body. From the middle of the 19th century, a ‘spiritual’ body overtook the physical body as the preferred form of afterlife vehicle.

BRUEGEL PIETER PAINTINGS

And heavenly needs, along with heavenly bodies, also changed over time. From the early modern period onwards, there was a tension between the idea of eternal life as one centred on the love and worship of God to the exclusion of human relationships to one focused on human relationships to the virtual exclusion of God. Thus, from the middle of the 17th century, there was a gradual transition from a heaven focused on the vision of God with much playing of harps and casting of crowns upon glassy seas, to heaven as a place of ongoing activities, moral improvement, travel and reunion with family, friends and pets – a kind of ethereal Club Med. At the same time, by the middle of the 19th century, hell, with its dark fires and gnawing worms, its tormenting and tormented demons, was becoming marginalised in the European mind, in part no doubt the result of the diminution of the public spectacle of punishments, torture and pain in the secular sphere.

The Hell, c1545. Found in the collection of Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Artist Henri de Patinier. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
The story of life after death is also part of the history of the human demand for justice. It reflects the belief that there is a need for justice on the other side of the grave, since there is precious little of it on this side. So it speaks to the recognition that, because virtue is not obviously its own reward, the best solution to the injustices on this side of death was to ‘even them up’ on the other side. Thus, a moral economy demanded the creation of places after death where the righteous would receive their just recompense and the wicked their just deserts, and of punishments and rewards proportionate to vices and virtues.

But by the beginning of the fifth century AD, it was clear that, while the really wicked deserved instant and eternal hell, and the really good instant and everlasting heaven, most of us, occasionally good but not very good at being really bad, deserved a place between the two. Thus we find that between the 5th and 11th centuries, the development of the idea of Purgatory, a place between heaven and hell where the not too wicked could be purged and purified in preparation for Heaven after the Day of Judgment. The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century was to throw Purgatory out, leaving our options after death either only heaven or hell.  

That all said, the ultimate destiny of the dead lay in the hands of God. It was he who would reward the good and punish the wicked, who would weigh up souls at the moment of their death and who would determine their eternal destiny. God rewarded the good and punished the wicked in different ways at different times in the history of the afterlife, according to various measures of his goodness, his justice and his righteous anger.

That said, it was accepted for the most part that God would save or damn in accordance with the virtues or vices of the dead. But it was also argued (by Augustine in the fifth century, for example, and later by John Calvin in the 16th), that God apportioned eternal happiness or everlasting torments merely as the arbitrary act of his own sovereign will, regardless of any person’s virtues or vices. This was to become a central feature of reformed thought about the afterlife from the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

John Calvin. (Photo By DEA/ G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)
In short, God could do whatever he liked and, it was argued, he did just that. For those of a libertine turn, this was a view conducive to eating, drinking and merry-making in the here and now; for those more puritanically inclined, it was an incentive to piety, sobriety and accumulation of wealth as proof of election to salvation. God’s power was emphasised – although, for many, it was at the cost of his goodness and justice. 

Our imaginings about the afterlife, both after death and after the end of history, are a testimony to the hope that many have had, and still do, for an extension of life beyond the grave. They speak to the desire for light beyond the darkness of death; for ultimate goodness beyond present evils; and for final justice over earthly inequities. They give voice to the faith that the drama of history, and the minor role that each of us has played in it, has an ultimate meaning and purpose, one that is discernible from the vistas of eternity if not from our present perspective.

For good and ill, these imaginings have enormously influenced how we have understood how we should think about life in the here and now and how we should act until life is no more. At the end of the day (or the world), they result from our being members of a species, each member of which knows that he or she will die. This is both our triumph and our tragedy.


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A macabre discovery reveals a little known fact in the history of ancient Greece


The end of the seventh century B.C. was a tumultuous period in Athenian history. Though once ruled by a king, the increasingly powerful region of Attica, home to Athens, had come to be presided over by aristocrats who maintained their hold on power through landownership and lifetime appointments. But as the century drew to a close, the political climate was primed for a new type of government—that of a single ruler, or tyrant. An evocative gravesite on the outskirts of Athens is a testament to this contentious moment in history.


The 13 Regions (NUTS II) of Greece and location of the Attica ResearchGate

Excavators at the Phaleron Delta necropolis have uncovered the remains of 80 men, shackled together at their wrists, lying in a mass grave. The most recent osteological studies have determined that the majority of the men were between 20 and 30 years old, although four were much younger, and that all 80 had been killed in the same manner—with a fatal blow to the head. 


Skeletons from the Phaleron necropolis to be scrutinized image Archaeology Wiki

The discovery of two small vases buried with them has allowed archaeologists to date the grave to the mid-to-late seventh century B.C., suggesting to project director Stella Chrysoulaki that the men were executed in the course of one of these attempts to gain political primacy. “For the first time,” Chrysoulaki says,  “We can illustrate historical events that took place during the struggle between aristocrats in the seventh century and led, through a long process, to the establishment of a democratic regime in the city of Athens.”



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Thursday, December 15, 2016

A new treasure has been discovered in Greece it was found in the ruins of an ancient city dating back 2,500 years

A piece of pottery dating to the late 6th century B.C photo: atlasobscura.com
You would think that every single bit of archaeological evidence for ancient life in Greece would have been uncovered by now. But there are still discoveries to be made. A team of archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and the University of Bournemouth in England took a deeper look at a site that had been dismissed as unimportant and found the ruins of an ancient city dating back 2,500 years, reports the Local.The city was located on a hillside near Vlochós, five hours north of Athens


Mysterious lost Greek city photo: DailyMail.co.uk
Part of the ruins there had been previously known, but since this area of Greece was thought to be a backwater in ancient times, this place was thought to be a small settlement of little interest.

To this team, though, “the fact that nobody has ever explored the hill before is a mystery,” said Robin Rönnlund, the Ph.D student who led the fieldwork.


From the air, the walls are visible photo: atlasobscura.com

Since they started exploring the city, the archaeologists have found the city’s walls, gates, and towers, along with pottery and coins, dating as far back as 500 B.C. The team is using ground-penetrating radar to map the city and avoid disturbing the site through excavation. It’s “quite a large city,” says Rönnlund, and could reveal more about ancient life in this overlooked part of Greece—at least about life up until about 300 B.C., when the city looks to have been abandoned.


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Friday, December 9, 2016

A brief History of sex and sexuality in Ancient Greece

Michelangelo’s ‘Leda and the Swan’. Found in the collection of Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)


Updated today 21/05/2020

The sexual habits of people in Ancient Greece – from prostitution to pillow talk – are explored in a new book written by Paul Chrystal. Exploring the many layers of sex and sexuality in various Greek societies – from the Minoan civilisation through to Sparta and Hellenistic Greece – In Bed with the Ancient Greeks examines homosexuality, pederasty, mythological sex and sex in Greek philosophy and religion.

In the beginning was sex. To the ancient Greek mythologisers, sexuality, love and sex were inextricably connected with the creation of the earth, the heavens and the underworld. Greek myth was a theogony of incest, murder, polygamy and intermarriage in which eroticism and fertility were elemental; they were there right from the start, demonstrating woman’s essential reproductive role in securing the cosmos, extending the human race and ensuring the fecundity of nature.


CLSX 374: Gender & Sexuality, Ancient & Modern University of Kansas.

Simultaneously, Zeus, the top god, wasted no time in asserting his dominance over the other gods (both male and female). His cavalier attitude towards female sexuality, as manifested in serial rape and seduction (Zeus raped Leda, daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, in the guise of a swan; raped Danae, a princess of Argos, disguised as the rain, and raped Ganymede, a male mortal) set a precedent for centuries of mortal male domination and female subservience. 


Leda and the Swan — Amanta Scott
A BERLIN (K.P.M.) PORCELAIN RECTANGULAR PLAQUE, LEDA AND THE SWAN Christie's

The depiction of Hera ( wife of Zeus and queen of the ancient Greek gods) as a distracting, duplicitous and deceptive woman opened the door for centuries of male insecurity about women, and misogyny.



Our earliest evidence for ancient Greek sexuality comes with the Minoans (approximately 3650 to 1400 BC). Women at this time were only partly dressed – the main items of clothing were short-sleeved robes that had layered, flounced skirts; these were open to the navel, leaving the breasts exposed. Women also wore a strapless fitted bodice, the first fitted garments known in history.
The realm of Minos Minoan art, Minoan, Ancient - Pinteres
Minoan civilization, 2nd millennium BC. Reconstruction of the fresco of the procession, found in the Palace of Knossos. Detail of young men carrying offerings to a goddess. (Photo by DEA/G DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

Women were typically depicted as having a tiny waist, full breasts, long hair and full hips: to our eyes and ears this is sexually charged and provocative, but to a Minoan probably not so. On the contrary, the voluptuous figure may have been a means by which women, and their artists, expressed their gender and status rather than male artists simply idealising female sexuality for their own delectation, satisfying a prurient male voyeurism. Women in Minoan Crete, it seems, were able to celebrate their femininity.

Fresco showing Minoan three women. photo: wikipedia.org

The body shape described above re-emerged during the mid-late 1800s, when women laced themselves into tight corsets to make their waists small and wore hoops under their skirts to exaggerate the proportions of their lower body.




Pederasty in Greece probably originated with the Cretans. Cretan pederasty was an early form of paedophilia that involved the ritual kidnapping ( harpagmos ) of a boy from an elite background by an aristocratic adult male, with the consent of the boy's father. This adult male was known as philetor, befriender; the boy was kleinos, glorious.
Pederastic couples at a symposium, as depicted on a tomb fresco from the Greek colony of Paestum in Italy. The man on the right tries to kiss the youth with whom he is sharing a couch. - Wikipedia
Cretan pederasty. photo: wikipedia.org

The man took the boy out into the wilderness, where they spent two months hunting and feasting with friends learning life skills, respect and responsibility. It is generally assumed that the philetor would begin having sex with the boy soon after taking him out into the wilds.

If the boy was pleased with how this went he changed his status from kleinos to parastates, or comrade, signifying that he had metaphorically fought in battle alongside his philetor; he then went back to society and lived with him.

Man and youth. Cretan ex-voto from Hermes and Aphrodite shrine at Kato Syme; Bronze, c. 670–650 BCE. photo: wikipedia.org

The philetor would shower the boy with expensive gifts, including an army uniform, an ox to be sacrificed to Zeus, and a drinking goblet – a symbol of spiritual accomplishment. At the same time, according to the geographer Strabo, the boy then had to choose between continuing with or putting an end to the relationship with his abductor, and whether to denounce the man if he had misbehaved in any way.


Satyrs and satyriasis

Satyrs, depicted in Greek mythology as beast-like men with a horse’s tail, donkey’s ears, upturned pug nose, receding hairline and erect penis, have a reputation for being inveterate masturbators with a penchant for rape, sodomy and necrophilia. A satyr was a true party animal with an insatiable passion for dancing, women and wine.

 Satyrs were experts on the aulos, a phallic-shaped double reed instrument; some vase paintings show satyrs ejaculating while playing, and one even shows a bee deftly avoiding the discharge in mid-flight. Another vase illustrates a hirsute satyr masturbating while shoving a dildo of sorts into his anus.


Statue of Silenus, a satyr and minor god of drunkenness, dated from 540-530 BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. (Photo by Prisma/UIG/Getty Images)


Apart from inspiring some wonderful depictions on ceramics, satyrs have left us the word satyriasis, which means hypersexuality – classified today in the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as satyriasis in men and as nymphomania in women (in 1951 it was still listed as a “sexual deviation”). 

Soranus of Ephesus - Wikipedia
Figure 1 from The effect of Soranus of Ephesus (98-138) Semantic Scholar

The word satyriasis appears frequently in the works of medical authors of the Roman empire who describe a condition no doubt prevalent for centuries previously. For example, Soranus contends that the “itching” felt in the genitals that makes women “touch themselves” increases their sexual urge and causes “mental derangement” and an immodest desire for a man. Greek physician Galen called it “uterine fury”, furor uterinus.



Achilles and Briseis

Epic [the Iliad] gives us one of our earliest surviving expressions of heterosexual love; it comes from a rather surprising source – from battle-hardened, Homeric war hero, alpha male Achilles.


Achilles and the Nereid Cymothoe: Attic red-figure kantharos from Volci (Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris) photo: wikipedia.org

Achilles uncharacteristically wears his heart on his sleeve when he reveals how much he loves Briseis in Book 9 of the Iliad, referring to her as if she were his wife. The beautiful and intelligent Briseis first encountered Achilles when he ruthlessly slaughtered her father, mother, three brothers and husband during a Greek assault on Troy, before taking her as war booty. Achilles wiped out Briseis’ family so that she was utterly bereft and had only him to focus on.


Who Was Briseis in The Iliad? ThoughtCo


Briseis and Phoenix, red-figure kylix, ca. 490 BC, Louvre photo: wikipedia.org


To Achilles it was simply the right and decent thing to do to love your woman – an attitude, of course, that may have been at odds with some of the male audience members of Homer’s epic over the years. 


Effeminacy and cross-dressing

Effeminacy in men was considered beyond the pale – para phusin or “outside nature”. It implied passivity and receptiveness, epithumein paschein – both weaknesses contrary to the proper sexual conduct of the Greek male who ought to be virile, dominant, penetrating and thrusting.


Hercules and Omphale. Hercules was sold as a slave to Omphale, queen of Lydia, to atone for the murder of Iphitos. Hercules was forced to wear Omphale's clothes and jewellery. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)


Cross-dressing had some surprising advocates. The heroic alpha-male Hercules, according to the Roman poet Ovid, indulged in a bout of cross-dressing with Omphale [queen of Lydia to whom Hercules was enslaved] Hercules put on Omphale’s clothes and Omphale dressed up in typically Herculean lion skin and wealded his club, which was symbolic of manhood and power. Surprisingly, perhaps, “lion-hearted” Achilles too was not averse to a spot of dressing up in women’s clothes, if it saved him from the call-up for the Trojan war.

Pseudo-Apollodorus, in the Bibliotheca [a compendium of Greek myths and heroic legends], tells us that to help her son dodge the draft Thetis [Achilles’ mother] concealed him at the court of Lycomedes, king of Skyros. Disguised as a girl Achilles lived among Lycomedes' daughters under the pseudonym Pyrrha, the red-haired girl. Achilles raped one of the daughters, Deidamia, and with her fathered a son, Neoptolemus.

Odysseus was told by the prophet Calchas that the Greeks would not capture Troy without Achilles' support, so he went to Skyros masquerading as a peddler selling women's clothes and jewellery with a shield and spear secreted in his wares. Achilles instantly took up the spear; Odysseus saw through his disguise as Pyrrha and persuaded him to join the Greek forces.


Another famous alpha male, Julius Caesar, was also involved in cross-dressing: apparently, aged 20, he lived the life of a girl in the court of King Nicomedes IV and was later referred to behind his back as the 'queen of Bithynia', and “every woman's man and every man's woman”. Suetonius described his long-fringed sleeves and loose belt as a bit odd, prompting statesman and dictator Sulla to warn everyone to “beware of the boy with the loose belt”.


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Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Four great principles of Athenian democracy that modern democracies have not mastered





















In  1792, Thomas Paine said that the Athenian democratic model will be much better represented by America, by including popular referendums and secret ballot voting. However, only some of the features of Athenian democracy are found in the American political system.


Below are four great principles of Athenian democracy that modern democracies have not mastered:

Banishment


Ostraka table for ostracism photo: Commons.wikipedia.org

In the fifth century BCE, Athenian citizens met and voted annually in the public square where a person became too strong. This was exiled for 10 years. Their names were scrawled on small pieces and to be exiled were needed a minimum 6,000 votes. This practice, called ostraka, to the emergence of the English word ostracize.


Vote using hands

Ancient sources mention that the Athenians voted by submitting stone urns. Since the fifth century, the Athenians voted by show of hands or with small tokens of bronze. Moreover, the voting process was based on secret ballot, every citizen receive 2 chips, one that provided a tubular axle and one that provided a solid axle. They accounted choice for or against a proposal or a defendant.




Paying votes

The Athenians received a small sum of money in exchange for the position of member of a jury or a deliberative body. The payment was a democratic invention that was intended to ensure that poor people are not stipulated exclusion from social commitment. But as the right to vote was becoming increasingly broad principles have become stricter: part of the jury could only adult males. Women, foreigners were excluded.

Alexander the Great II Athenian democracy Ancient Origins Members Site








Deciding on the people who vote

In Athens, all citizens had the right to vote and met every 10 days Pnyx, a small hill located right next to the Acropolis which can accommodate up to 6,000 members. This assembly decided military priorities, financial and religious also were granted various citizens and honored citizens. A small council of 500 members were preparing the meeting agenda. They were also debated foreign policy principles.



A system of government of the United States awfully similar to the Athenian might be unrecognizable. Senators and MPs would be elected by a principle similar to the lottery. Moreover, this scheme excludes the women and immigrants from politics and it might be exiled politicians unpopular.





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