Greece & Rome
39 findings, grouped by tradition.
Greek11
- CaduceusThe snakes are not in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, where Apollo's gift is a golden staff. Macrobius (fifth century CE) reports the Egyptians shaped it as two serpents, male and female.
- Rod of AsclepiusThe two-snake medical caduceus is modern. Wilcox and Whitham (2003) trace it to a nineteenth-century medical publisher's printer's mark. It spread after the US Army Medical Corps adopted it early in the twentieth century.
- LabyrinthThat cathedral labyrinths were walked as substitute pilgrimages is a modern assertion: in 1922 W. H. Matthews found it rested chiefly on J. B. F. Géruzez's description of Reims (1817), which cites no authority.
- OmphalosPausanias, in the second century CE, describes two stones at Delphi. One is the white-marble Omphalus, called the centre of the earth. The other is a small stone, oiled daily, said to be the one Cronus swallowed instead of Zeus.
- TetractysThe Pythagorean oath is not sworn by the tetractys. Sextus Empiricus, around 200 CE, quotes it as sworn 'by the man' who bequeathed the tetractys, meaning Pythagoras, 'for him they deified'.
- GorgoneionHomer's Iliad already sets a Gorgon's head on Athena's aegis and on Agamemnon's shield, yet never names Medusa. That Athena set Perseus's trophy in her shield is told in the Library of Apollodorus, of the first or second century AD.
- AtlantisAtlantis begins in two texts, Plato's Timaeus and Critias of about 360 BCE. All since, Donnelly's 1882 drowned civilisation included, is commentary on them.
- The Pythia at DelphiLaurel-chewing is ancient: Lucian has her munch a laurel-leaf. In 2001 de Boer, Hale and Chanton found not volcanic fumes but ethylene in spring water near the temple.
- Temple Incubation at the AsklepieiaThe Epidaurus cure stelae, six of which Pausanias still saw in the second century CE, record wonders, not case notes. The first tells of Cleo, pregnant five years, whose newborn son washed himself in the spring.
- The Minotaur and the LabyrinthDoubt about the tale is itself ancient. Philochorus, the Athenian historian put to death about 261 BCE, said the Cretans denied it. To them the Labyrinth was only a prison, and the Athenian youths were prizes at funeral games for Androgeos, won by Minos's cruel general Taurus. Plutarch reports this around 100 CE.
- The Centaur and ChironChiron's medicine fails him: in Ovid's Fasti, of the early first century CE, his own herbs cannot master the Hydra's poison. The 'wounded healer' is modern. Jung in 1951 made the doctor's own hurt the measure of his power to heal, citing Kerényi's 1948 book on Asclepius for 'the Greek myth of the wounded physician'.
Gnosticism8
- The Nag Hammadi LibraryThe find that let Gnostics speak also undid the label: Codex VI holds Hermetic texts and a piece of Plato's Republic. In 1996 Michael Williams urged dropping "Gnosticism" as a category.
- The DemiurgeKnown for centuries mainly from opponents' summaries, the myth's own text surfaced when Carl Reinhardt bought a Coptic codex containing the Apocryphon of John in Cairo in January 1896. Nag Hammadi, in December 1945, added a library.
- GnosisA 1966 congress at Messina proposed separating 'gnosis' from 'Gnosticism', but its definition never won general assent. In 1996 Michael Williams argued the category 'Gnosticism' should be dismantled.
- Is There Such a Thing as Gnosticism?The Messina colloquium of April 1966 proposed an agreed definition of Gnosticism; thirty years later, in 1996, Michael Williams argued for 'dismantling a dubious category'.
- The Gnostic GospelsJohn Whale's Sunday Times article on the book, 'The Gospel of the Losers' (2 December 1979), led to Channel 4's Jesus: The Evidence, first shown on 8 April 1984.
- The Gospel of Jesus's WifeHarvard's 2014 tests found nothing modern in the papyrus or ink; what settled the case was provenance. Ariel Sabar's Atlantic investigation of June 2016 identified the owner as Walter Fritz, a former Egyptology student, who denied forging it. The next day Karen King said the evidence 'tips the balance towards forgery'.
- Sethian GnosticismHans-Martin Schenke grouped these texts as Sethian in 1974. Zostrianos and Allogenes share titles with revelations Porphyry says reached Plotinus's circle.
- The SyzygyAion (1951) holds that the contents of anima and animus can be integrated but "they themselves cannot, since they are archetypes". Jung's note adds that of the syzygy's elements, the contrasexual traits can be integrated into the personality but the archetypal image cannot.
Hermeticism5
- Monas HieroglyphicaDee says he carried the Monas in his mind for seven years and wrote it in twelve days, 13 to 25 January 1564, at Antwerp. Willem Silvius printed it there on 31 March.
- Hermes TrismegistusIn 1614 Isaac Casaubon argued that the Hermetica date from early Christian times. Kircher in 1652 still placed Hermes in Abraham's age and took him for their author.
- The Emerald TabletNo Egyptian or Greek original is known: the oldest text is Arabic, in the Book of the Secret of Creation, compiled in the late eighth or early ninth century.
- The KybalionPhilip Deslippe's 2011 edition identifies William Walker Atkinson as the author behind the name Three Initiates.
- The Corpus HermeticumCosimo de' Medici had Ficino set Plato aside to translate Hermes first, thinking him far older. Casaubon dated the Greek to the Christian era in 1614.
Neoplatonism3
- TheurgyThe word is second-century: theourgoi stand in Chaldean Oracles fr. 153, verse ascribed to Julian the Theurgist, whom the Suda dates under Marcus Aurelius.
- PlotinusIn Ennead V.1, written in Rome after 253, he calls his teachings 'no novelties' but an explanation of Plato; 'Neoplatonism' is a modern label.
- Neoplatonic TheurgyThe title De mysteriis Aegyptiorum is Marsilio Ficino's, from the Latin paraphrase Aldus printed in 1497, and its 2003 translators call it 'rather tendentious'. The work presents itself as Master Abamon's reply to Porphyry's Letter to Anebo, and its division into ten books dates only from the Renaissance.
Greco-Roman2
- The Eleusinian MysteriesThe only ancient report that the highest Eleusinian grade was shown an ear of grain reaped in silence is the Refutation ascribed to Hippolytus, early in the third century CE. It is a Christian polemicist relaying a Gnostic sect's allegory, not an initiate's account.
- The Mithraic MysteriesFranz Cumont's derivation of Roman Mithraism from Iranian religion, in English from 1903, held the field for decades. At the first Mithraic congress, Manchester 1971, John Hinnells and Richard Gordon called it circular: Cumont assumed an Iranian origin, then used Iranian parallels to prove it.
Pythagoreanism2
- PythagorasRebirth is not a late attribution: his contemporary Xenophanes mocked him for hearing a dead friend's soul in a beaten puppy, a fragment preserved by Diogenes Laertius.
- Pythagorean Number MysticismAristotle never links the number system to Pythagoras: he credits 'the so-called Pythagoreans' of the fifth century, whose doctrine matches the book of Philolaus.
Arthurian Romance1
Catharism1
Classical Greek Philosophy1
Mediterranean / Near Eastern1
Orphism1
Platonism1
Presocratic Philosophy1
Stoicism1