10 Shocking Facts From Ancient Greece
10 Agoge
As anyone who studied Classics watched 300
will know, the Spartans were pretty badass.
But the ability to slice through legions of
enemies didn’t come without sacrifice.
Firstly, disabled and weak-looking Spartans
were thrown off Mount Taygetos at birth. And
those that didn’t spend their first day
on Earth being lobbed down a mountain had
to enter full time military training as soon
as they reached the age of 7.
This training, called the agoge, involved
learning stealth, fighting, and pain tolerance.
Children were deliberately given too little
to eat to teach them how to hunt and steal
off others. To toughen them up, they had to
survive much of their time in the wilderness,
with no shoes and only one item of clothing.
The item? A cloak deliberately too thin for
winter and too thick for summer.
The agoge continued until soldiers were 21,
at which point they had to live in barracks
until marriage at 30.
9 Ostrica
Most people know that Athens was the world’s
first democracy. But this passion for people-power
took some pretty unusual forms, such as the
city’s annual Ostracism.
In the Ostracism, citizens could vote to kick
any person out of the city for a full decade.
Provided at least 6,000 people voted, the
person with the most votes would be forced
to leave for 10 years.
The exiled person had 10 days to leave, and
if they returned before their decade-long
sentence the penalty was death.
The idea behind this seemingly cruel practice
was to stop Athens becoming a tyranny by allowing
the people to vote out anyone they thought
was getting too powerful. However, somewhat
inevitably, not everyone voted with this goal
in mind.
One voter famously decided to try and ostracize
Aristides The Just, simply because he thought
it was pretentious to call yourself “The
Just”. Which, to be fair, it is.
8 Hygiene
Classical Greece was, in many ways, extremely
advanced. Some of history’s most influential
philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists
came from one of Greece’s city-states.
Yet, despite their many revolutionary discoveries,
their understanding of hygiene was… primitive,
to say the least.
Doctors would regularly taste a patient’s
earwax, vomit, or urine to see if it tasted
odd. You see, the influential doctor Hippocrates
had spread the belief that the body was made
up of fluids, and that a properly-trained
medical expert could taste what was wrong
with a patient by sampling their juices.
Outside of medicine, the Greeks had some pretty
gross fashion trends. Rich men would buy the
sweat of successful athletes, hoping to be
imbued with their powers.
And if that wasn’t enough to convince you
not to hop in your time machine and take a
visit to Ancient Athens, most Greeks had to
use stones to wipe themselves after going
to the toilet.
7 Pankration
The modern Olympics have almost everything:
dramatic openings, dedicated athletes, heart-warming
underdog stories.
But one thing it doesn't have is men beating
each other to death.
Pankration was an Ancient Greek mixed martial
art so intense it would make Jackie Chan quiver.
Aside from no biting or gouging, there were
no rules. Punching, kicking, wrestling, and
choking were common attacks.
At the Olympics pankration fights continued
until one fighter submitted, was knocked-out
or, in some cases, died. To give you an idea
of how bloodthirsty this sport was, one Olympic
champion, Arrhichion of Phigalia , died in
the final. But, he still managed to win his
fight because he managed to break his opponent's
ankle. The opponent submitted, not realizing
Arrhichion had passed away, and thus lost
the match.
We’re not saying the Olympics would definitely
be better with regular death matches in the
middle. But we are saying it’s got to be
worth a shot.
6 Penis Festival
Greek religion could get pretty weird. If
you don’t believe us read the myth about
the time Zeus turned into a swan and slept
with a - presumably pretty desperate - human
woman.
But no part of Hellenic religion was more
consistently strange than the City of Dionysia,
where there was a large yearly festival honoring
the Greek god of wine, theater, and fertility:
Dionysus.
And what better way to celebrate such a deity
than getting blind drunk and stomping around
with a giant phallic statue?
Every year, Dionysian worshippers would drink
insane amounts of wine, then grab a giant
model penis (which, I guess they just had
lying around), and march down to the Theater
of Dionysus.
As they made their way down to the theater,
revelers would sing bawdy songs about sex
and crack rude jokes. Interestingly, Aristotle
claims that this is where performed comedy
first began, with people adapting the jokes
they heard for stage shows.
5 Slavery
It probably won’t surprise you that the
Spartans had slaves. After all, someone had
to do the farming and housework while the
Spartans were off at the barracks fighting
and coupling up.
And it also probably won’t surprise you
that the Spartans treated their slaves, a
local subjugated people called helots, pretty
badly.
Terrified by the fact the helots outnumbered
them 20 to 1, every year the Spartans would
ceremonially declare war on their slaves.
During this period slaves could be killed
with impunity, and the Spartan secret police,
the Krypteia, would appear outside random
houses and kill the helots there.
But it was Athens, supposed bastion of democracy,
that actually had the most slaves. One source
puts the number of Athenian slaves, who were
treated as property and could be legally killed,
at 80,000. That's an average of 4 slaves for
every Athenian household.
4 Witchcraft
Though the Festival of the Massive Male Member
[Show footage/images from Penis Procession]
may lead you to think otherwise, religion
was actually very important to the Greeks.
And while most people know the Greeks worshipped
and sacrificed animals to the Olympian pantheon
of gods, there was also an active underground
culture of black magic and witchcraft.
Over the years, tablets found buried in tens
of ancient graves have revealed that people
across Greece liked to dabble in necromancy.
Necromancy, or attempting to commune with
the spirits of the dead, is also briefly mentioned
in the Odyssey and by Plato.
Chatting with the dead was not the only supernatural
feats the Greeks attempted. Thessaly, a region
in the middle of Greece, became renowned as
a haven of witchcraft. People would visit
the sorceresses, hoping to buy spells that
would do everything from turn them invisible
to harming their enemies.
These practices were looked down on in public.
But it seems that, in private, they thrived.
3 Spartan Relationships
As you might have gleaned by now, the Spartans
were big on soldiering. Even when the Persian
army at Thermopylae threatened to fire so
many arrows at them it would block out the
sun, the Spartan King Leonidas simply shrugged
and replied: “Then we’ll fight in the
shade”.
That confidence wasn’t just built from hours
of training. Hoplite warfare required complete
trust in the man next to you. And to build
that trust, Spartan soldiers were encouraged
to couple up. This would make them ashamed
to abandon their partners in the heat of battle.
Trainee soldiers were told to take on older,
adult, lovers at the age of 12. In fact, Spartan
men spent so much time with one another, they
often found it hard to adjust to taking wives.
Before a Spartan wedding, the bride had to
shave her head and dress up on boy’s clothing.
Then the groom would swoop in and kidnap her
from the ceremony.
2 Athenian Punishment
Of the many innovations Ancient Athens brought
in, a system of justice with law courts based
on presumption of innocence and a jury of
one's peers is among the finest.
But, while we may recognize some of the legal
principles that governed ancient Athenians,
other parts would likely shock us.
First of all, a slave’s testimony in court
was not considered valid unless it was extracted
under torture. Even if a slave had no reason
to lie, and wanted to be honest, they still
had to be put under physical pain before their
word was viewed as reliable.
On top of that cruelty, some of the punishments
doled out by the Athenian justice system are
as weird as they are draconian. For instance,
the punishment for sleeping with another man’s
wife was that the cucked man was allowed to
punish the offender using a radish in a way
that is best left up to the imagination.
1 Athenian Democracy
As we’ve already mentioned in this video,
Athens was big on democracy.
The city’s fortunes owed its safety and
riches to a strong trireme [try-ream] navy,
which required thousands of citizen volunteers
to row. With the masses protecting the city,
it seemed only just to involve them in the
state’s decision-making Assembly. Hence,
democracy was born.
Yet, while still revolutionary, Athens’
democracy wasn’t as open as you might think.
Neither women nor slaves could vote. And since
voting on city matters meant taking time away
from work, it quickly became dominated by
the rich, who could afford the breaks.
In fact, Athenian democracy quickly became
so corrupt and dominated by a small group
of the rich that ordinary Athenians stopped
turning up at all. The city had to start commanding
slaves to run around the Assembly with a rope
dipped in red paint. Any citizen who got hit
with the rope was marked, and had to go vote.
So, that was 10 Shocking Facts From Ancient
Greece. Which aspect of Ancient Athens did
you find the strangest? What weird Spartan
stuff should have made the list? Let us know,
in the comments below.
And if you want more classical content, check
out 10 Shocking Facts About Ancient Rome,
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