Filthy Secrets of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece seems like he was a pretty great place. It was
the birthplace of democracy. It had a flourishing art scene a vibrant mythology
and spectacular architecture, prominent intellectuals like Aristotle and Plato
made huge leaps and scientific and philosophical reasoning. The land was
fertile and the wine flow like water. It was a veritable Utopia of rethought
and civilizational achievement or was it?
Welcome back to Epic Media. Today we will know about the
dark dirty secrets of ancient Greece from a zombie apocalypse is to
questionable beauty trends.
Draconian Laws
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| Image: A rare file of paper of Draconian Laws |
If you lived in Athens any 7th Century BC then you could have faced death for stealing a cabbage around 621 BC Athens instituted its first written Constitution before then the legal system was based on a system of oral law. There was no neat set of define laws and penalties for crimes and usually it was a victim’s responsibility to seek justice for some crime committed against them. This could lead to blood feuds that lasted for generations. And what's more the aristocracy would often manipulate these laws to benefit themselves as they saw fit which led to a vastly unequal society. So it was eventually agreed that reform was needed the reform though ended up being a very harsh system where death or enslavement was handed out for even minor crimes. These first written laws were call the Draconian Constitution pinned by a little known aristocrat named Draco.
They fail to any inequality between the aristocracy and common people for one thing it set up the dead enslavement system. We mentioned earlier were wealthy land owners could enslave their tenants if they didn't pay their debts for another only those who carried weapons and owned a certain amount of land had any political rights. Also many of the punishments didn't seem to fit the crimes. You could serve death for stealing but if you accidentally dispatch someone and then apologize to the person’s family. You'd be off the hook Draco’s laws were eventually deemed to well Draconian.
In 594 BC just a few
decades after they were enacted they were repealed by the lawmaker Solon and
replaced with a more lenient set of laws.
Zombies In Ancient Greece
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| Image: |
Our modern culture is obsessed with zombies, from “The
Walking Dead” to “I Am Legend” to seize of kids dressed up as undead for Halloween.
Zombies and a zombie apocalypse have become part of movie coverage and it turns
out that the Greeks were pretty into zombies too.
Despite developing
philosophies that revolved around logic rational thought and discourse. The
ancient Greeks also seem to fear the undead emerging from their graves and stock
in the streets roaming around and attacking people as a way of getting revenge
for their own death.
Archaeologists have found graves where the disease have been
weighed down with rocks or large fragments of pottery. So they were unable to
rise up and stumble freely around binding people. Old writing from the time
also mentioned, zombies calling them revenues. Often people with mysterious
illnesses or deformities would be suspected that becoming zombies after they
were put in the ground.
And grave sites uncovered in various sites within the
ancient Greek territory seem to confirm this. Carrie Weaver a prominent Greek
archaeologist has written that it is clear that many members of Greek society
thought that the dead could roam the earth. They imagine scenarios in which
reanimated corpses rose from their graves prow the streets and stalked
unsuspecting victims often to exact retribution deny to them in life. The Greeks
also had a famous zombie type of legend Vrykolakas. Vrykolakas was an undead
creature kind of in between a zombie and a vampire. They will eat whoever was
unlucky enough to cross its path.
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| Image: Legend Vrykolakas |
Deadly Beauty
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| Image: Beauty Ingredient |
If you are a woman living in ancient Greece and wanted to
put on some makeup it was very likely you are applying lead to your face. This lead was a popular ingredient in ancient Greek Cosmetics. The word itself come from
the Greek “KOSMETICA”. And the act
of beautifying one's face was to Kommotikon.
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| Image: Beautiful Lady of Ancient Greek |
Although Greek writers who were mostly men typically frowned upon Kommotikon saying it was mostly used by women of the night and other lower class women. It's now widely accepted that pretty much all classes women and even some men use make-up to highlight their feces and brighten their skin. But the lead paste they used often lead to horrible disfigurement and scarring. Eating away at the skin and causing disease. In a vicious cycle it will be applied and thicker and thicker amounts to cover up the damage it was already causing. Kommotikon fell under a more general word for beauty in ancient Greece which was known as “KALLOS”. Kallos wasn't just external beauty. The Greeks believe that outward beauty was also sign of someone's internal beauty. If you are beautiful than you are morally good person and vice versa.
It was around this time that the Greek mathematician Pythagoras discovered the golden ratio balance and symmetry became linked to beauty of all kinds in nature and in humans. Symmetrical faces were thus considered the most beautiful faces. It went so far in ancient Greece that Unibrows became all the rage. Unibrows a feared facial feature now which many people try to hide through plucking or shaving were considered more beautiful because they were more symmetrical. Many people would go so far as to use coal. And Egyptian type of mascara made with more lead-based ingredients to paint on the unibrow, if they were unlucky enough not to have been blessed by the God with a lusciously joined brow. Ah! Yes, the things we do for beauty.
Sickness And Medicine
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| Image: Treatment of Ancient Greek |
Medicine in ancient Greece was definitely a step up from
what it was before. But it was still ancient in a lot of ways. For one thing
before the 5th Century BC illness was considered divine punishment
exacted by the God. If you died the God was to blame and if you got better it
was because the God gave you a gift.
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| Image: Ancient Treatment |
By 500 BC things were starting to get a bit more refined. But the distinction between science and religion was often quite blurry. The Greek God Asclepius for example was both a divine healer and are highly skilled doctor. However, there were no professional qualifications for being a doctor. Anyone could roam around ancient Greece saying they were doctors practicing the technic or mysterious art of medicine had some kind of malady oftentimes bloodletting would be prescribed. The ancient Greeks were big fans of it. Bloodletting was connected to a medicinal system called Humorism. Though there wasn't much that was funny about it. In humorism the human body is split into four humors such as blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. In a healthy person these for components were in proper balance but pain or illness would pop up if they became out of whack.
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| Image: A doctor was giving treatment |
A lot of the time temperature was directly connected to the
humorous. For example hot foods were thought to produce yellow bile while cool
foods produce phlegm. Cities exposed to cold winds were associated with lung
disease and hot wins with digestive problems. Humorism was practice long after
ancient Greece. It wasn't until the 1850s and the Advent of Germ Theory that it
fell out of favor among physicians around the world.
A Deadly Plague And War
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| Image: Plague affected people |
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| Image: War of Athens |