Compared to other ancient civilizations, life was simpler back in Greece, right?
Wrong!
While we'd like to imagine it as a cultured and sophisticated society, there’s absolutely
no way you’d survive life in ancient Greece for long.
Here's why.
Feeling unwell?
Prior to the 5th century BCE, the human body was basically left to the mercy of the gods.
Patients often participated in a healing ritual called temple sleep, or incubation.
It's exactly what it sounds like patients would literally just go to sleep in a temple.
And then, in the morning, they'd tell a priest about their dreams from the night before.
Based on that dream, the priest would prescribe a remedy, usually in the form of incantation
or a charm of some sort or they'd simply declare the patient healed.
There were technically doctors back then… but there weren't any specific requirements
for people who advertised themselves as such.
And as for surgery, these are the kinds of tools that were used… the stuff of nightmares.
"This is going to be extremely painful, Mr. Verrill."
"Oohhhhhh!"
Meanwhile, anyone who happened to live in Athens in 430 BC had roughly a 25 percent
chance of dying in a horrible way.
That's because a mysterious plague broke out that lasted for about five years, and the
death toll was catastrophic.
This plague ended up killing somewhere between 75,000 to 100,000 people.
Many aspects of the human body were a complete mystery in ancient Greece.
People firmly believed that if a woman was ill, it was likely because she'd fallen victim
to a wayward womb.
You heard that right: This ancient piece of pseudo-science even had a name: the "wandering
womb."
Some physicians believed the womb was an entirely separate entity that just so happened to live
inside women.
According to Wired, it was widely believed that these freewheeling wombs could be coaxed
back into place by applying pleasant smells to a woman's you-know-what.
Meanwhile, highly unpleasant smells were applied to whatever part of the body the womb had
theoretically wandered off to.
Oh, and there was another treatment prescribed for keeping a womb in place: Pregnancy.
And in the ancient world, pregnancy and delivery were exceptionally dangerous.
According to Women in Antiquity, a pregnancy was prescribed for everything from fever and
insomnia to chronic back pain.
Geez.
Sparta is widely considered the most militaristic of the Greek city-states.
At the height of its power around 404 BC the city of Sparta didn't even have walls.
Inhabitants evidently felt that they didn't need them… because they had Spartans.
When it comes to Sparta, figuring out what's real and what's fiction can be tough.
We know the land in Sparta was very fertile… and not having to worry about food meant that
people could focus on other hobbies like poetry and bloody battle.
"This is Sparta!"
Sparta's militaristic bent began when it managed to conquer the neighboring land of Messenia,
turning its inhabitants into slaves.
Boys were trained from the age of 7 to 20, and they were basically expected to be resistant
to hunger and cold despite being given precious little in the way of food, clothing, or supplies.
If they were suspected of having any kind of disability, the Spartans would kill them
usually when they were infants.
According to National Geographic, the only time these slaves got a break from training
was when they were actually at war.
According to the BBC, the ancient Greeks took a minimalist approach to make-up.
They didn't want the cosmetics to appear obvious they just wanted their skin to look healthy.
Unfortunately, these cosmetics were made from lead and mercury.
In fact, such powders were used well into the 19th century.
According to University College London, that's when women started using much more of the
stuff and the damaging effects became quite apparent: Blackened skin.
Baldness.
Even damage to teeth.
According to NBC News, both men and women in ancient Greece took to wearing lead face
cream, which was believed to help keep their complexions clear and even improve the condition
of their skin.
It did neither, of course.
Around 1177 BC, several civilizations fell including the Babylonians, the Egyptians,
and early Greek civilizations like the Minoans and Mycenaeans . Cities were sacked and burned.
Trade routes, abandoned.
In a letter, Babylonian king Hammurabi described the scenario like this:
"Behold, the enemy's ships came; my cities were burned, and they did evil things in my
country."
No one's really sure who these enemies were … but they do know a great many people met
a grisly end at the hands of a group of raiders known only as the Sea Peoples.
Egyptian records tell tall tales of a mysterious people who laid waste to the entire area.
It seems as though they first showed up alongside the Hittites.
Strangely, no one recorded who they were or exactly where they came from.
They fought in Egypt and the Mediterranean for centuries, destroying entire cities and
settlements and then moving on.
And then these mysterious pirates fell out of Egyptian history in 1178 BC.
Would you have survived their warships and ceaseless rampages?
We're guessing the answer is no.
According to Punishment in Ancient Athens, people were often punished by society out
of sheer anger.
Anyone could bring charges against anyone else.
About 96 percent of surviving court documents feature cases in which one person simply hated
the other.
By the time both parties were in court, it was the prosecutor's job to make the jury
feel equally angry so that punishment could be handed out and supposed justice served.
Suffice it to say, the laws of ancient Greece could be incredibly brutal.
In the 7th century BC, Athens asked an aristocrat named Draco to draft a new set of laws.This
fellow is why we use the word "Draconian" to describe particularly brutal laws.
He was, in short, a complete and utter jerk.
As Encyclopedia Brittanica explains it,
"Draconian laws were [...] said to be written in blood, rather than ink.
Death was prescribed for almost all criminal offenses."
Think you would have survived these harsh laws?
You likely would have been sentenced to death for such arrogance.
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