Livy (c. 59 BCE-17 CE)
“There is, to speak generally, no such thing as work without gain or gain without work: toil and pleasure, though apparent opposites, are indissolubly linked.”
At the start of the second phase of the decades-long Peloponnesian War (c. 431-404 BCE) between the alliances of Athens and Sparta, an Athenian expeditionary force was sent to Sicily to besiege the city of Syracuse. Athens’ Sicilian campaign lasted from 415-413 BCE, ending in dismal failure. Syracuse, with the help of Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies, resisted the Athenian assault and went on to destroy the expeditionary force and its accompanying fleet. With the Athenian efforts in Sicily thwarted, the focus of the war shifted back toward Greece, as the emboldened Peloponnesians pressed to gain naval superiority in the Aegean and the Hellespont/Dardanelles. The loss of sea dominance, however, was something that the Athenians could not abide. Athens’ military, desperate after the embarrassing loss in Sicily and a subsequent oligarchic coup in their flagship city a few years later, made the bold decision to recall from exile the unscrupulous, but brilliant, Athenian statesman and general, Alcibiades. Rejoining the Athenian military in 411 BCE, Alcibiades greatly aided his countrymen’s efforts to maintain a strong naval presence in the Aegean and the Hellespont.
With Alcibiades’ help, the Athenian fleet won a string of victories against the Peloponnesian fleet, led by the Spartan admiral Mindarus. The gem of these successes was the Battle of Cyzicus in 410 BCE, where Alcibiades and the Athenians ambushed or outmaneuvered the Peloponnesian fleet, destroying its ships and killing its admiral. Cyzicus was such a disaster for Sparta that it sent an offer of peace after news of the battle spread. Unfortunately for the Athenians, who could not foresee that they would eventually lose the war, the offer of peace was rejected and the war continued. Perhaps if the Athenians had known just how committed the Persians were becoming toward the Spartan side of the war, they would have spent more time considering the peace offer.
On the Persian-controlled side of the Aegean, the survivors of the Peloponnesian fleet that had been destroyed at Cyzicus were sheltered and provided for by the satrap Pharnabazus. Unbeknownst to the Athenians, this satrap was about to orchestrate a project that would undo most of the damage that Alcibiades had done in 410 BCE. The mercenary and philosopher, Xenophon (c. 420-350 BCE), recounted the event:
“He [Pharnabazus] gave each man a cloak and two months’ rations; and he armed the men who had served in the fleet and put them on guard duty along his own coastline. He then called together the ship-captains and generals from the various cities and instructed the men from each city to build at Antandrus the same number of triremes as those which they had lost. He himself supplied the money, and told them to take the timber from Mount Ida” (Hellenica, I.1.25).
News of the rebuilding of this fleet was no doubt greatly frustrating and annoying to the Athenians, who had worked hard in their attempts to thwart Peloponnesian ambitions of posing a threat from the sea. With such aid from the Persians, the Spartans and their allies were eventually able to gain naval supremacy in the Peloponnesian War and force Athens to surrender in 404 BCE.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Illustration of Agesilaus and Pharnabazus by Henry M. Paget (c. 1856-1936), work dated 1882, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
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This painting, by the English artist John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), depicts two ill-fated lovers from Greek legend and mythology. On the right, the armed and armored man is Jason. According to legend, he was a claimant to the Thessalian city of Iolcos, which was controlled by Jason’s uncle, Pelias. The power struggle between uncle and nephew resulted in Jason being sent off on a perilous journey into the Black Sea, tasked with obtaining a golden fleece from the lands of King Aeëtes, ruler of Colchis. Jason, like many ancient Greek heroes, was helped along his journey by supportive Greek gods and goddesses. When the hero arrived in Colchis, one of the actions that the gods took to help Jason was to force the daughter of King Aeëtes to fall madly in love with the adventurer. This daughter, Medea, is the woman depicted by John William Waterhouse on the left side of the painting. She would help Jason overcome the trials placed in his way by King Aeëtes, and aid him in formulating a plan to take the golden fleece. Medea had a reputation of being greatly skilled in magic, and she was able to produce a potion for Jason that made him as strong as a god. Apollonius of Rhodes, a poet from the 3rd century BCE, described the scene of Medea explaining to Jason how to use her potion:
“At daybreak steep the drug I have provided
in pure spring water, strip off all your clothes,
and rub your body with it as with oil.
There will be awesome power and boundless valor
within it. You will find your strength a match
not for mere mortals but the deathless gods.”
(Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, book 3, approximately line 1050)
Medea eventually decided to flee from her father’s kingdom and join Jason on his ship, the Argo. The two married, but their lives did not turn out happily ever after. Jason eventually abandoned Medea for another woman, and it was a betrayal that the sorceress from Colchis did not take well. As told by the ancient playwright Euripides in the 5th century BCE, the enraged Medea went on a murder rampage, killing her own sons who had been fathered by Jason, and she also killed Jason’s new love, as well as the woman’s father.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
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Machiavelli (c. 1469-1527)
“The desire to acquire possessions is a very natural and ordinary thing, and when those men do it who can do so successfully, they are always praised and not blamed, but when they cannot and yet want to do so at all costs, they make a mistake deserving of great blame.”
King Zhou, thought to have reigned between 1075-1046 BCE in China, was the last ruler of the ancient Chinese Shang Dynasty. According to legend, he was the worst kind of mad tyrant, whose cruelty, debauchery and peculiarly insane whims led to the downfall of his dynasty’s power. Among the many dramatic and gruesome tales recorded about the bizarre figure of King Zhou, a pattern exists. He was apparently greatly interested in biology and the human anatomy, yet this benign interest was unfortunately twisted by his other traits of cruelty and morbid curiosity. The mixture of these characteristics, so the story goes, turned King Zhou into something of a mad scientist, who had his agents dissect different types of people within the kingdom in order to satiate his inquisitive mind.
Several of King Zhou’s supposed experiments were written down in the Book of Documents (Shang Shu), otherwise known as the Most Venerable Book, a text that has its origins in the days before Confucius (c. 551-479 BCE). According to the text, King Zhou gruesomely “cut open the bellies of pregnant women” (Shang Shu, chapter 27), and that, man or woman, noble or commoner—all types of people were butchered by the mad king. In another story, when the king was intrigued by the way some people build up a resistance to cold and wet environments, he decided to amputate and inspect the legs of rice farmers to see if their limbs had any anatomical advantage that helped them in the soggy rice paddies. Similarly, one time when the king became curious about the differences between those who were deemed wise, as opposed to those thought unwise, he allegedly ordered the executions of people with differing intelligence so that he could compare and contrast their organs. These two tales of gruesome human experiments appeared in a poem included in the aforementioned ancient text:
“Listen: he dissected the bare legs
Of those who work deep in the paddy fields
And cut out for casual inspection
The hearts of the highest men!”
(Shang Shu, chapter 29)
If there is a grain of truth to the lurid allegations made against the ancient king, it is no wonder that his reign led to a backlash that would end Shang Dynasty power in China. The unpopular ruler was defeated by King Wu, who set up his own dynasty to replace the Shang in China. King Wu’s dynasty was ironically called the Zhou Dynasty.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Painting from a Ten Kings of Hell series, by Riku Chuen, c. Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
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This curious image (labeled BL Royal 12 C XIX, f. 63 in the British Library manuscript collection) is a medieval painting of a deadly mythological creature known as a basilisk. Like many ancient and medieval monsters, the basilisk was depicted as an unnatural hybrid of known animals—in this case, snakes and birds. The appearance of the basilisk could change dramatically depending on the author or artist describing the creature. Some made the basilisk very snake-like, whereas other illustrators gave the monster a more birdlike or dragonesque form. Despite differing interpretations on how the basilisk might look, commentators were usually unified on the basilisk’s most dangerous feature. According to the folklore and legends about the beast, basilisks had a deadly gaze that could potentially kill whatever came into their field of view. The famous witch-hunting text, The Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), recorded the following theory about the basilisk’s fatal glare:
“Moreover if a basilisk sees a man first its look is fatal; but if he [the man] sees it first he may be able to kill it; and the reason why the basilisk is able to kill a man by its gaze is because when it sees him, owing to its anger a certain terrible poison is set in motion through its body, and this it can dart from its eyes, thus infecting the atmosphere with deadly venom. And thus the man breathes in the air which it has infected and is stupefied and dies” (The Malleus Maleficarum, part 1, question 2).
In the painting featured above, some unfortunate victims are shown experiencing the basilisk’s formidable abilities. On the right side of the image, a man is shown keeling over from the effects of the monster’s glare. At the other corner of the painting, however, a weasel, ermine or ferret fares better than the human. Fighting for its life, the animal jumps to take a bite out of the basilisk. The monster, unfortunately for the ermine or ferret, was able to quickly turn its head to face the brave challenger. That is the moment that the painter captured in the scene above—the eye-to-eye glare between the two creatures.
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Sima Xiangru (c. 179-117 BCE)
“An enlightened man sees the end of things while they are still in bud, and a wise man knows how to avoid danger before it has taken shape.”
According to the historian, Procopius (c. 490-565), a forty-five foot (13.716 meter) long and fifteen foot (4.572 meter) wide whale caused havoc in the 6th century within the waters of the straits that linked the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. The creature was a great menace to the seafarers of Byzantium, and it did not discriminate when choosing which ships to attack, be them crewed by fishermen, merchants or warriors. It was known to roam from time to time, but the monstrous whale apparently had a special fondness for the Bosporus Strait, where the more confined environment made the whale’s harassments all the more destructive. For around fifty years, the whale patrolled the straits, and the locals came to see it as something of a sea-monster that could attack their ships at any moment. Sailors even gave the whale a nickname—either Porphyry, Porphyrius or Porphyrion—which was likely derived from a famous charioteer, or otherwise was inspired by a mythological giant that waged war on the gods. Procopius described the struggle between the local sailors and the aggressive beast:
“It was at that time also that the whale, which the Byzantines called Porphyrius, was caught. This whale had been annoying Byzantium and the towns about it for fifty years, not continuously, however, but disappearing sometimes for a rather long interval. And it sank many boats and terrified the passengers of many others, driving them from their course and carrying them off to great distances. It had consequently become a matter of concern to Emperor Justinian to capture this creature, but he was unable by any device to accomplish his purpose” (The Wars, book VII, chapter 29).
As was hinted in the quote above, the whale’s reign of terror eventually came to an end during the reign of Justinian (r. 527-565). According to the account of Procopius, the creature was chasing dolphins one day near the mouth of the Black Sea, when it fatefully swam too close to shore. To the shock and delight of nearby locals, the whale that had been terrorizing them for decades accidentally beached itself and became stuck. When news of the stranding spread, an angry mob quickly rushed to the scene, carrying ropes and axes to mete out revenge against the downfallen scourge of the Bosporus. Unfortunately for the whale, energetic locals were said to have used ropes and wagons to haul the creature further inland, where they butchered it with axes and held a feast with its meat to celebrate their victory over the famous sea monster.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Illustration by I. W. Taber for a 1902 edition of Moby Dick, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
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Although this curious late-15th-century manuscript painting is reminiscent of the images in witchcraft treatises and demonology books, it actually is an artwork that tells the origin story of a famous legendary figure from Britain. The setting for the image can be ascertained from the book in which it was found; it comes from a text about King Arthur’s knight, Lancelot, and therefore the origin story depicted in this painting also comes from the universe of the legendary Arthurian tales. Yet, this image has little to do with Lancelot. Due to the highly otherworldly elements in the painting featured above, it may not be surprising to learn that the origin story being shown here involves perhaps the most supernaturally-aligned of King Arthur’s many companions—Merlin.
By the time that the 15th-century artist painted the scene above, the story he was re-creating had already been around for centuries. It was a story that had been written down by the monk, Nennius (c. 9th century), and later retold and fleshed out by the peculiar writer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in 1136. According to these two early authors, a 5th-century Briton king known as Vortigern (the man attributed with inviting the Saxons to invade England) had his agents search Britain for a child who was born without a human father. Vortigern’s agents indeed discovered one such child—called Ambrose by Nennius, and Ambrosius Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
As the story goes, Merlin’s mother was a nun, who became pregnant after several visitations from a spiritual creature. This otherworldly parentage was said to have been the source of Merlin’s legendary abilities, and even his blood, in itself, was supposed to have inherent power for those who could obtain it. Young Merlin and his cloistered mother were invited to the court of Vortigern, where the nun told the story of her miraculous son’s birth. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote an account of the origin story:
“I [Merlin’s mother] know only this: that when I was in our private apartment with my sister nuns, some one used to come to me in the form of a most handsome young man. He would often hold me tightly in his arms and kiss me. When he had been some little time with me he would disappear, so that I could no longer see him. Many times, too, when I was sitting alone, he would talk with me, without becoming visible; and when he came to see me in this way he would often make love with me, as a man would do, and in that way he made me pregnant” (History of the Kings of Britain, VI.18).
Such is the scene that the painting re-creates. It shows Merlin’s mother being visited by her supernatural suitor, a union that would bring about King Arthur’s mysterious advisor. Unfortunately for the nun depicted above, the painter opted for a more demonic form for the spirit, instead of deferring to Geoffrey’s description of the creature taking the shape of “a most handsome young man.”
Written by C. Keith Hansley
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The Bhagavad Gita (c. 2nd century BCE – 2nd century CE)
“Wisdom is better
than practice,
and focused mind
is better than wisdom.
Letting go of
the fruit of action
is better than focused mind
From letting go, peace soon comes.”
