Tag: ancient history

By Martini Fisher Posted on

The Matriarch and the Rebel

Eucleia, the ancient Greek female personification of glory and good repute, is the youngest of the Charites. At least two statue bases in the sanctuary were votive offerings by a woman named Eurydice. One of the inscriptions, dating back to 340 BC, reads “Eurydika daughter of Sirras to goddess Eukleia.” Eurydice is the paternal grandmother of Alexander the Great. Her great-granddaughter, a niece of Alexander the Great, was also named Eurydice. Both women were as far removed from the stereotypical docile and subdued image that Eucleia represented.

By Martini Fisher Posted on

Augurs of Rome, Masters of the Birds

Cycles of nature were at the core of the ancient practice of divination to decipher the will of the gods. Many different methods of divination were practiced in antiquity, such as dream interpretations (oneiromancy), interpreting the entrails of slaughtered animals (haruspicy), and augury (ornithomancy) which interprets the movements and activities of birds. Augury in particular became famously influential in the Roman empire.

By Martini Fisher Posted on

Sensational Lives of Ancient Courtesans

One day, the 19th century courtesan Esther Guimond was traveling through Naples when she was stopped for a routine examination of her passport. When asked her profession, she quietly and discreetly told the official that she was a woman of independent means. Seeing the puzzled look on the official’s face, she exasperatedly declared, “Courtesan! Take care to remember it!”

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Germanicus and Agrippina: An Imperial Love Story

Caligula’s parents, Germanicus and Agripinna, provided the genetic lynch-pin between the two most powerful dynasties in Rome, as well as celebrity, nobility and glamour. They were beloved by the Emperor and the empire alike. From the glowing reports on Germanicus and Agripinna, it was hard to believe that Caligula was their son.

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The Assassination Of Commodus

Commodus, the son and heir of the distinguished “philosopher emperor” Marcus Aurelius, was a failure as a Roman emperor despite all the influences and privileges that would have prepared him for the position from a very young age. He was appointed co-emperor of Rome and ruled alongside his father when he was just 16 years old and became the sole emperor after the death of his father in 180 AD. What then followed were years of brutal misrule which precipitated civil strife that ended 84 years of the Roman empire’s stability and prosperity and led to several assassination attempts on his life.

By Martini Fisher Posted on

Telesilla and the Brave Women of Argos

An ancient oracle told by a Pythian priestess says, “But when the time shall come that the female conquers in battle, driving away the male, and wins great glory in Argos, then many wives of the Argives shall tear both cheeks in their mourning.” The female whom this oracle refers to was Telesilla.

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Octavian, Mark Antony and the Ancient Battle of “Fake News”

Disinformation and propaganda have featured in human communication since at least the ancient Roman period. Apart from using biographers and their writings to discredit the reputation of the Roman general Mark Antony, Octavian, the adopted heir of Julius Caesar, also waged a propaganda campaign in the form of brief, sharp slogans written on coins to portray Antony as a womanizer and a drunk. Through his use of propaganda, Octavian also implied that Mark Antony had been corrupted by his affair with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra and had become Cleopatra’s puppet. This early use of disinformation campaign had allowed Octavian to change the republican system once and for all and led to his road to becoming Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.

By Martini Fisher Posted on

Anna Perenna and the Ides of March

The assassination of Julius Caesar on the 15th of March 44 BC was a turning point in Roman history. Since then, the Ides of March became notorious as being associated with death. However, long before the Ides of March became associated with Julius Caesar’s murder, it was a day of celebration for the ancient goddess Anna Perenna, a goddess beloved by the common people.

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The Romance and Adventure of Bhadda Kundalakesa

The Therigatha (“Verses of the Elder Nuns”) is a collection of short poems by and about the early enlightened women in Buddhism. These women were the theris (“senior ones”) among ordained Buddhist women. They bore that epithet due to their religious achievements. Most of the gatha (“poems”) in the anthology are the songs of their experiences. With some of its poems dating as early as the late 6th century BC, while the poems of the Therigatha are clearly nowhere near as old as the poetry of the Rig Veda, for example, which had been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BC, the poems in the Therigatha are still some of the early poetries of India.

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Tiresias and the Curse of the Forbidden Sight

Greek mythology tells us about Tiresias, a blind prophet of Apollo, who was famous for his clairvoyance and for being changed into a woman for seven years. He was in Thebes for seven generations, giving advice to Cadmus, the first king of Thebes, and seeing the story of King Laius and his son Oedipus unfold. After the Seven Against Thebes expedition, in which Polynices (son of Oedipus) and six others attacked Thebes, Tiresias died. Pliny the Elder even said that Tiresias invented augury.

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Unveiling the Mysteries of Benzaiten, Goddess of War, Music, and Culture

Benzaiten is one of Japan’s most complex and popular syncretic deities who has long ago been conflated and associated with other divinities from the Hindu, Buddhist, and Japanese pantheons. Her many forms range from a two-armed beauty playing music to an eight-armed martial deity holding weapons and a divine representation of the supreme Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu. Benzaiten is also an agricultural deity invoked for rain and harvests. This patronage earns her a place as one of the shichifukujin (‘Seven Gods of Fortune’)

By Martini Fisher Posted on

Baubo, the Great and Forgotten

In 1898, a group of German archaeologists working in the Demeter sanctuary at Priene unearthed a peculiar set of Hellenistic female figurines. The head of each of these figurines sits directly on her legs. Each figure also has long hair that drapes around her back resembling a lifted veil. These figures represent Baubo.