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The culture and legends of ancient Greece have a remarkably long legacy in the modern
language of education, politics, philosophy, art and science. Classical references from
thousands of years ago continue to appear. But what was the origin of some of these ideas?
1. Was there ever really a Trojan Horse?
The story of the Trojan Horse is first mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, an epic
song committed to writing around 750BC, describing the aftermath of a war at
Troy that purportedly took place around 500 years earlier.
After besieging Troy (modern-day Hisarlik in Turkey) for 10 years without
success, the Greek army encamped outside the city walls made as if to sail
home, leaving behind them a giant wooden horse as an offering to the goddess
Athena.
The Trojans triumphantly dragged the horse within Troy, and when night fell the
Greek warriors concealed inside it climbed out and destroyed the city.
Archaeological evidence shows that Troy was indeed burned down; but the
wooden horse is an imaginative fable, perhaps inspired by the way ancient
siege-engines were clothed with damp horse-hides to stop them being set
alight by fire-arrows.
The date attributed to the writing down of the Homeric epics is connected to
the earliest evidence for the existence of Greek script in the 8th Century BC.
The Greeks knew that their alphabet (later borrowed by the Romans to become
the western alphabet) was adapted from that of the Phoenicians, a neareastern nation whose letter-sequence began "aleph bet".
The fact that the adaptation was uniform throughout Greece has suggested
that there was a single adapter rather than many. Greek tradition named the
adapter Palamedes, which may just mean "clever man of old". Palamedes was
also said to have invented counting, currency, and board games.
The Greek letter-shapes came to differ visually from their Phoenician
progenitors - with the current geometrical letter-shapes credited to the 6th
Century mathematician Pythagoras.
4. Did Pythagoras invent Pythagoras' theorem? Or did he copy his
homework from someone else?
It is doubtful whether Pythagoras (c. 570-495BC) was really a mathematician as
we understand the word. Schoolchildren still learn his so-called theorem about
the square on the hypotenuse (a2+b2 =c2). But the Babylonians knew this
equation centuries earlier, and there is no evidence that Pythagoras either
discovered or proved it.
for the first time around 532BC; another claims that drama began with ritual
choruses and gradually introduced actors' parts.
Aristotle (384-322BC) supposed that the choruses of tragedy were originally
ritual songs (dithyrambs) sung and danced in Dionysus' honour, while comedy
emerged out of ribald performances involving model phalluses.
As a god associated with shifting roles and appearances, Dionysus seems an
apt choice of god to give rise to drama. But from the earliest extant tragedy,
Aeschylus' Persians of 472BC, few surviving tragedies have anything to do with
Dionysus.
Comic drama was largely devoted to making fun of contemporary figures including in several plays (most famously in Aristophanes' Clouds) the
philosopher Socrates.
9. What made Socrates think about becoming a philosopher?
Socrates (469-399BC) may have had his head in the clouds, and was portrayed
in Aristophanes' comedy as entertaining ideas ranging from the scientifically
absurd ("How do you measure a flea's jump?") to the socially subversive ("I can
teach anyone to win any argument, even if they're in the wrong").
This picture is at odds with the main sources of biographical data on Socrates,
the writings of his pupils Plato and Xenophon. Both the latter treat him with
great respect as a moral questioner and guide, but they say almost nothing of
Socrates' earlier activities.
In fact our first description of Socrates,0 dating to his thirties, show him as a
man of action. He served in a military campaign in northern Greece in 432BC,
and during a brutal battle he saved the life of his beloved young friend
Alcibiades. Subsequently he never left Athens, and spent his time trying to get
his fellow Athenians to examine their own lives and thoughts.
We might speculate that Socrates had toyed with science and politics in his
youth, until a life-and-death experience in battle turned him to devoting the
remainder of his life to the search for wisdom and truth.
As he wrote nothing himself, our strongest image of Socrates as a philosopher
comes from the dialogues of his devoted pupil Plato, whose own pupil Aristotle
was tutor of Alexander, prince of Macedon.
10. Was Alexander the Great really that great?
Alexander (356-323BC) was to become one the greatest soldier-generals the
world had ever seen.
According to ancient sources, however, he was physically unprepossessing.
Short and stocky, he was a hard drinker with a ruddy complexion, a rasping
voice, and an impulsive temper which on one occasion led him to kill his
companion Cleitus in a violent rage.
As his years progressed he became paranoid and megalomaniacal. However, in
10 short years from the age of 20 he forged a vast empire stretching from
Egypt to India. Never defeated in battle, he made use of innovative siege
engines every bit as as effective as the fabled Trojan Horse, and founded 20
cities that bore his name, including Alexandria in Egypt.
His military success was little short of miraculous, and in the eyes of an ancient
world devoted to warfare and conquest it was only right to accord him the title
of "Great".
Dr Armand D'Angour is associate professor of classics at the University of
Oxford