Kiwi Hellenist

The final point about positivism is important. Geeks love naturalistic explanations of mythological ideas, however far fetched. Trolls are really cultural memory of Neanderthals. Dragons are dinosaurs. The witch craze was due to ergot poisoning etc. If anyone is interested in what actual historians think about such theories, read for example this: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/delphic-oracle.html Tl/dr: The oracle speaking cryptic prophetic verses from a trance is a literary construction. So the ethylene theory is a trying to provide a naturalistic explanation for a fiction.

This blog by a classicist claims that the word salary is indeed coming from the latin words salarium and sal, but that it is not clear what the connection is, that there is neither evidence for the explanation that Roman soldiers were paid in salt nor that it was an allowance for the specific purpose of buying salt: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.html Regarding the latter he writes: "As I said above, ‘salt allowance’ isn’t a terrible guess. But I strongly suspect it’s much more metaphorical than that. Compare how the Greek word for a salary was opsōnion, literally ‘(money) for buying opson’, where opson means ‘fish, relish, sauce’. That doesn’t mean Greek workers were given a ‘fish allowance’: it means that there was a generalised idea that wages went on traded goods like fish, and not on things like barley which land-owners would grow for themselves. Similarly, in Rome, grain allowances were a common thing; it could easily make sense to interpret salarium as ‘everything-else-money’."

> The esteemed philosopher was sentenced to death because he was deliberately annoying people No. Socrates was executed because he was associated with the worst rulers that the city of Athens had ever known, all former students of his, who notably went on to kill thousands of Athenian citizens (not enemies, strangers, or slaves), following the defeat in the Peloponnesian War. After the tyrants were killed and democracy was restored, general amnesty law was granted to anyone involved except the Thirty Tyrants themselves and their direct aides. However resentment, understandably, remained. > There was a lot of bad blood between the people of Athens and Socrates’ followers. That wouldn’t have been enough by itself. But the murder of between 5% and 15% of the citizen population in 404 must have pushed things over the edge. Imagine if Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh, and Saddam Hussein had all had the same person as their ethics teacher: would you be very surprised if that person got harsh treatment from a jury? And would you then call that person a martyr? http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/04/socrates-1-did-socrates-die-…

> By the time of Julius Caesar, the solstices were on the 25th That is false. See https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2022/05/julian-calendar.html , or "Digression #2: why do Roman writers report the date of the solstice as 25 December?" at https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2015/12/christmas-and-its-supposed-… . Solstices were on the 25th a few hundred years before the time of Julius Caesar. He did not even attempt to put them back there; his calendar put the summer solstice on the 24th.

> "eye of the needle" refers to a small gate or passage in ancient city walls, There's a lot of discussion on this verse. Apparently, the gate interpretation didn't exist until the 11 century. It was rethought to be Rope for a while but this blog post discredits that. https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2023/11/camel.html

Here's a detailed discussion on the history starting with "There’s no good evidence that kamilos — supposedly meaning ‘rope’ — was ever even a real word in ancient Greek.": https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2023/11/camel.html And of course if you are wealthy then putting a camel through the eye of a needle isn't hard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38461089

On a slightly different topic, I was reading about other greek epics beyond Homer, and I knew there were things like the Theban Cycle and a broader Trojan War cycle, and it turns out that some of them may have never existed, they almost certainly weren't any kind of "cycle", the ones that did exist weren't very good, and that they may never have been written down at all outside of summaries. https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2020/02/epic-cycle.html

This same site has an article on that very myth: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/12/salting-earth.html?m=1 To summarize, salting an area was a real thing, but the evidence suggests that it was done to make the land more fertile and not less. The idea was to replace your enemy's city with weeds and greenery, as if it had never existed.

Here's a detailed analysis with reference to primary sources: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.html tl;dr: There is a genuine linguistic connection between "salt" and "salary", but there is no evidence soldiers were ever paid in salt, or given an allowance specifically for buying salt. Possibly "salary" meant "money for salt" with "salt" used metonymically to mean any trade goods, similar to how "fish" was used in Ancient Greek, but even this is pure speculation.

I don’t think it’s a mistranslation, the manuscripts themselves differ. Regardless of which is ‘correct,’ it’s likely an error in the retelling or copying. This person points out that either 616 or 666 could refer to Nero and some other possible evidence that was the case: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-number-of-beast.html?m=1

The pagan origin of Christmas is a myth. Something that specifically deals with alleged Northern European origins: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/12/concerning-yule.html

So much so that there appears to be persistent belief that the word "salary" is derived from "sel" (salt): http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.html .

> Caviar was served as a free bar snack, in the hope that as with peanuts, the saltiness would encourage drinking. So it isn't just the cheap stuff. I do have a note about the source, though: > Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky This book vectors the myth that Romans were paid in salt. This is not true: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.html (Wikipedia has, of course, been fixed. The printed material never will be.)

>'"the wine-dark sea"...well it doesn't mean anything like you could imagine, for their whole model of colour utterly different from ours.' Doesn't seem like everyone agrees with this speculation: >"I'm even less impressed by Gordon's argument: it relies on oinops meaning 'wine-dark'. The trouble is, that's not a firm foundation. Strictly literally, the phrase straightforwardly means 'wine-faced sea', from οἶνος 'wine' + ὄψ 'face'." http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/01/colours-in-homer-2-wine-dark…

> salt was not a rare resource in italy, the sea is everywhere If I recall correctly, the book from the article mentions that the sea is an inefficient way to gather salt. The salinity is just much lower than what you can find in underground brine springs. It also goes into how Italian city-states went to war over control of saltworks, and how it hugely increased the wealth of whoever controlled it. So although it may not have been rare, I don't think it's accurate to paint it as an abundant resource, either. Interesting about the misinformation around the etymology of "salary." Thanks for pointing out. Found an article [1] that goes into more depth about how there's no evidence for the explanation. [1]: http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.html