Politismos Museum of Greek History

02/10/2022

The last part of our latest article series, "The Golden Fruit," is now up! Check it out here: http://mag.politismosmuseum.org/the-golden-fruit-the-great-healer/

Thank you for joining us!

01/27/2022

Part four of our series on olives, "The Golden Fruit," is up! Read it here: http://mag.politismosmuseum.org/the-golden-fruit-a-gift-from-above/

The final part will be posted on February 10. Make sure you save the date!

01/13/2022

Part three of "The Golden Fruit" is up! Come read it here: http://mag.politismosmuseum.org/the-golden-fruit-a-way-of-life/

Part four will go live on January 27.

12/30/2021

Part two of "The Golden Fruit" is live on the Politismos blog! Check it out here:

12/17/2021

It's time for one more Fun Fact Friday! Did you know that the Ancient Greeks would blame harpies when things went missing? Since the mythical bird-women were often depicted snatching things up and flying away with them, they made convenient scapegoats when some small household object disappeared!

Source: Lesley Adkins and Roy Adkins, Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece (New York: Facts on File, 1997), 307.

And with that, Fun Fact Friday is officially going into retirement. I am extremely sad to see it end, but I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope you will all continue to find new fun facts—not just about Ancient Greece, but from every time and place you can think of (and not just on Fridays, either)! Either way, though, thank you so much for enjoying this series with me.

12/16/2021

The first part of Politismos's new 5-part series on olives, "The Golden Fruit," is now live! Check it out here: http://mag.politismosmuseum.org/the-golden-fruit-athenas-gift/

Part two goes up on December 30. Keep your eyes peeled!

12/10/2021

It's Fun Fact Friday! Did you know that one of the worst punishments an Ancient Greek criminal could receive was being denied a burial after his ex*****on? They believed this would condemn his soul to wander the banks of the River Styx forever, never reaching Hades.

Source: Robert Garland, "Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks, Second Edition" (Santa Barbara, CA: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 229.

12/03/2021

It's Fun Fact Friday! Did you know that one of the oldest olive trees in the world is on the Greek island of Crete? Suspected to be over 2,000 years old, it still bears fruit!

Source: "The Oldest Olive Tree in the World Still: Elia Vouvon." Greek City Times. September 15, 2020.

With a Greek name “Elia Vouvon” (Greek Ελιά Βουβών), the Monumental Olive Tree of Vouves is among the 20 ancient olive trees of Crete and it is probably the oldest olive trees in the world that still produces olives. The ancient Olive Tree of Vouves (Elia Vouvon) is located in the vill...

11/26/2021

It's Fun Fact Friday again! Did you know that Ancient Greeks used olive oil in their skincare routines? After applying it to their bodies, they would use a bronze scraping tool called a strigil to scrape themselves clean!

Source: "Bronze Strigil (Scraper)," Met Museum,

Richter, Gisela M. A. 1915. Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes. no. 857, p. 295, New York: Gilliss Press.Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1992. Vol. 6: Kentauroi-Oiax

11/19/2021

It's Fun Fact Friday again! Did you know that one of the world's oldest surviving "cookbooks" is from Ancient Greece? Written by Athenaeus, "Deipnosophistai" is a collection of discussions on Greek food, literature, and art.

Source: "About," Digital Athenaeus, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, https://digitalathenaeus.org/

11/12/2021

It's Fun Fact Friday! Did you know that the Ancient Greeks did war dances? One of the most famous was the Pyrrhichios, in which armed dancers acted out a battle!

Source: Alexandra Goulaki-Voutira, “Pyrrhic Dance and Female Pyrrhic Dancers,” RIdIM/RCMI Newsletter 21, no. 1 (1996): 3–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41605006.

Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

11/05/2021

It's Fun Fact Friday again! Did you know that the Ancient Greeks had beauty contests? Called "kallisteia," they were hosted on Olympic training grounds, and were open to both men and women!

Source: "Would You be Beautiful in the Ancient World?" BBC News, January 10, 2015,

Beauty in ancient Greece was a complicated business, with an ominous undercurrent, as historian Bettany Hughes explains.