Herodotus - Tumblr Posts

Tom Holland blurbed Herodotus??

Herodotus, ever curious, ever open-minded, is the exception that proves the rule. “Philobarbaros”—“barbarian lover”—one indignant patriot labeled him: the closest to the phrase “bleeding-heart liberal” that ancient Greek approached.

Tom Holland, Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

That explains why I have a crush on Herodotos now, when I'm playing Assassin's creed Odyssey, because I used to have crush on Haddock too...

i just realised who herodotos reminded me of

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

Herodotus

Humanity has fought countless wars throughout its history, often driven by hatred, power and influence. There was a 100 year war, a thirty year war and countless other religious wars, ideological wars, there is even a drug war. What a destructive force dwells in people who always immediately discover the differences and rarely the commonalities of their species.

What can never be denied is that they are descended from apes. A tribal, hierarchically organised animal with territorial behaviour and high aggression potential. Monkeys kill monkeys.

It is a matter of protecting its territory from other tribes and, if necessary, expanding it when the population increases. In other words, ensuring the survival of one's own group. The same towards the others.

Unfortunately, these behaviours are deeply anchored in humans, territoriality, impressiveness, but also cooperation and compassion.

Evolution is sometimes simply too slow to keep up with the technical development and creativity of the human species.

What I love about special people is their hatred of each other on behalf of everyone but me.

Looking at them not working together to solve the real problems they have created makes me smile.

War of aggression is not a solution but always a business.

Satan more or less

George Carlin - We Like War

they do on fox & fascists now

Oh dear lord... thank you so much for posting this, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. It drives me nuts that pop culture will set a show/movie/book (well, maybe book(s), not entirely sure on that one,) in Ancient Greece, or maybe will just use the Greek names of the Gods, but Heracles will be called Hercules.

I also appreciate that you pointed out how the Greeks also used syncretism

Listen, this is a very specific topic to be iffy about, but for your knowledge, the Roman gods are not the Greek gods.

The Romans were big on syncretism (the combination of different forms of belief or intellectual thought) and the adoption of foreign gods. The Greek deities were known since very early periods via the Etruscan culture, which was heavily influenced by Greece since the middle of the 8th century BC because of trade routes as well as the Greek cultural potential and would come to be completely engulfed around the third century BC with the Roman-Etruscan wars, but just like you’d see the Romans claiming the Germanic tribes worshipped their own gods under different names (the Germania by Roman historian Tacitus, written around 98 AD), the same happened here, and the fusion wasn’t 100% accurate.

While in the case of Zeus and Jupiter, for example, it worked well, Venus is far more motherly and political than Aphrodite (as Mars is the Father of Rome via the myth of Romulus and Remus, Venus is Venus Genetrix, Venus the Mother, and the only time you’ll see Aphrodite being motherly is in… the Aeneid, a distinctively Roman piece), Mars is an agricultural god as well as the god of war and has way more political connotations than Ares (he was a member of the archaic Capitoline Triad), Mercury is far more linked with commerce than the more pastoral Hermes, and the list goes on. Apollo was imported directly and very early (a temple for him, the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, was erected in the city of Rome as early as 431 BC), thus keeping the name but undergoing a very distinct Romanization of his attributes and worship. Janus, Quirinus and Terminus were very important Roman gods which had no Greek equivalent.

Isis, for example, was worshipped as herself, equated with a number of deities in both the Greek and the Roman worlds and some of her methods of worship and symbolism were associated with the Virgin Mary. It’s a far more complicated scenario, babes, especially when you consider Alexander’s conquests and the expansion of Hellenistic culture as well as its contact with many other cultures.

Syncretism is way more complicated than “the Romans just stole the Greek gods and gave them different names, the uncreative fucks”. The traditional date for Rome’s foundation is 753 BC and the Western Roman Empire would last until 436 AD. That’s over a thousand years of conquest, trade and growing and shrinking territories, and none of these factors are likely to leave a religion unaltered.

Besides, the practice of religious syncretism is way older and more common than you’d expect. The Akkadians did it to Summerian deities a few thousand years before this especially after the conquest of Sargon of Akkad in 2340 BC (“Mesopotamia: the Sumerians”. Washington State University). The Greeks were doing much the same with the Roman pantheon itself (Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Plutarch use Greek names for Roman cult), with the Egyptian pantheon and with the Scythian pantheon (Herodotus in both cases, though the associations would outlive him, such as the case of Zeus/Amon).

So, no the Roman gods aren’t the plagiarized versions of the Greek gods, and I could defend this in front of a jury.