I seem to remember something from a class about Pericles saying (maybe in the funeral oration) not to pursue the Athenian Empire during war with Sparta. This would have been broken by things like the Sicilian Expedition. He could've said something closer to don't use resources away from Attica. If anyone knows what I'm talking about and could point me in the right direction of where this is, I'd be grateful.

This was an original post at the askphilosophy sub:

From my reading Pythagoras was one of the first Greeks to start fleshing philosophy out and he was big on respecting animals, going as far as to give them lectures out in nature, allegedly anyway. But I've never understood why Pythagoras was so unique among Greeks in how he considered them.

I understand even in his time he was considered a bit on the mystical side of things rather than rational so people may have not taken him too seriously here. I have a hard time discerning which of his beliefs others took as silly vs serious. It's obviously pretty inconvenient in ancient times to start respecting animals in similar ways to humans but the Greeks were so rich and well off, I don't feel like that explains why none of them afterwards seemed to carry this respect of animals as well.

It seems like all of the other Greeks we commonly learn of after him were fairly explicit that animals are well beneath humans, quite the contrast from a few hundred years prior.

In The Anabasis of Alexander by Arrian, he mentions talents being used by the Aspendians: "...they went back; but he ordered them to give him fifty talents as pay for his army..."

What were talents worth in relation to other currencies and would they actually be used outside of Greece?

I'm just curious how widely used this helmet style would have been. I know it was eventually phased out on favor of lighter gear and the pilos helmet, but was this the go to helmet for many hoplites?

Also when was the peak of this Hemet style?

Did the Spartans use these commonly? Many depictions favor the pilos it seems

Im doing research for a story i am writing. I was wondering if anyone knew any source or if anyone knows directly where like the greeks would have believed the end of the world is, westward wise. Im more asking if there was a believe entrance to the Realm of Haides.

It is definitely hypothetical, but if we could bring a non-Spartan Ancient Greek from the classical era, maybe a century earlier or later, how would he view the modern world and where he would finally choose to settle? Let’s say he lands in modern Greece. Would he like this world? Personally I think that he is going to write off the Western world entirely sooner or later. Then he will focus to East Asia, but still find problems. Then he would try SE Asia, then Russia and finally he would settle to somewhere like Afghanistan. He would probably be 50 50 on sub-Saharan Africa.

We know from many sources that during the time Homer wrote about in the Iliad (not the time from which he was writing, but the time of the events in the story) iron was used but was a very rare resource.

However, in the Iliad, one of the prizes Achilles offers in the Funeral Games (Book 23) is a big piece of iron that a king he killed used to use as a discus. Achilles goes out of his way to explain how valuable that iron is, and how someone would be set financially for 5years if he owned it. He's saying this despite being royalty himself.

What I'm wondering is, if even the royal prince Achilles considers this iron to be so valuable, why would a king (I think it was Eetion? But I don't remember) use it as a discus to throw around the field? Obviously Homer was drawing from some kind of passed-down historical knowledge. But do we have any records or evidence of this practice among people around 1250 BCE (Iliad's setting), and why would they do it with such a valuable commodity?

I got this decorative owl a while ago from my great grandmother and i just realized the person in the middle might be someone important and my first thought was Athena because it's an owl but I don't know. Does anyone have an answer about what this is?

At the end of the Siege of Halicarnassus, the Persians set the city on fire. How did they do this? As in, what did they burn specifically and what substance did they use?

Where does that γ come from?

perfect tense*

I’m not an archeologist so I shouldn’t complain, but I wish there was more to know about these people!

Are there any cultural/mythological connections between the Minoans and the classical ancient Greeks?

Thanks!

I visited the Mycenaean acropolis today. I understand the city surrounding the acropolis included likely tens of thousands of people.

Are there any artistic renderings of what the city, or another city in the Mycenaean civilization looked like? I'm curious what they look like. I assume a lot of farm land and dwellings? I tried googling what did the area surrounding the mycenaean acropolis look like and similar phrases but nothing relevant came up.

Hi! I was recommended to come here from another server!

So I'm a college student writing a term paper for a classics class, and my topic is androgyny in 5-6th century Ancient Greece! I'm having a hard time finding things to read and cite, so if anyone has anything interesting I'd love to hear about it!! Thank you so much.

Hi there! I'm writing a book about Alexander the Great from Hephaestion's perspective, and I'm going to stop there for brevity's sake, but I have some questions about naming conventions.

I am not using Hephaistion nor Alexandros, but what about Parmenion (Parmenio), Cleitus (Clitus) or cities such as Termessus (Termessos), etc.?

Why are there two spellings of lots of names and which should I use?