Convincing and indeed "larger than life" as the article describes.

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Kinda dumb they use a different statue as the main image in the article

The actual statue it’s talking about is towards the bottom

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My Greek mythology loving daughter would like to point out that if it was found in Greece, it would be Heracles.

Yeah but it's just half the image. Does anyone have the full image of the statue?

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Unless it was built by Roman’s which makes sense as they would have been occupying Greece right at that time

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/10/2000-year-old-hercules-statue-unearthed-at-ancient-city-of-philippi/144863?amp

Is that what it meant with barren? No d? Looks like it fell off

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It would still have been referred to most often as Heracles, as Greek was the dominant language of the eastern portions of the empire. Latin never took hold as the lingua franca of the area, so along it Heracles is more accurate to what locals (and later Romans themselves in the area) would have called it.

But I digress, it is mostly a matter of which perspective you find most personally valid.

The article does say it’s a Roman statue…

Eh. Even then, they spoke Greek in Greece.

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The article also says Byzantine Era, and at the point they were firmly Greek Romans.

Well, the early "Byzantine" era (It's just late antiquity Roman, Eastern Roman if you must) did still have Latin usage for much of it until Heraclius at an official state level. So I couldn't quite go that far as I didn't catch the exact date. Maybe you're right though, if it's post Heraclius than it would be Greek Romans.

It'd have to be super early Byzantine era, as Christianity was pretty solidly established after not too long - I can't imagine much support after 450, or maybe 550 at the absolute latest for a Hercules/Heracles statue.

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Hell, they spoke greek in rome

That famous "et tu brutus" was actually said in Greek (if actually spoken at all)

The article states that the statue was sculpted during the Roman era, around the 2nd century AD but last adorned buildings during the Byzantine era in the 8th or 9th century. I believe Latin was at least spoken by some people during the 2nd century since many inscriptions in Latin have been found in the city from that time period.

I love that after 2000 years someone was just like...."oh hey cool look at that statue"

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Marvel are really upping their marketing game.

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Greeks continued to exist and continued to speak Greek for the most part.

Is no one else focused on the headline? Roman statue of Greek hero Hercules found in greece... It's either a Roman statue of Hercules or a Greek statue of Heracles.

And... The British Museum has mysteriously already acquired half of it.

It estimates around 200AD. Ya coulda just read the article…

Named after Hera, lifelong enemies?

I think it’s fine.

The age of the statue for that region would indicate it would have been made by “Romans”. The Roman’s depicted the Greek hero “Hercules”. Remember that even though they bastardized the gods Hercules was still considered a Greek Hero.. even though as a Greek his name was Heracles

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Strong dude holding a lions skin is 100% Hercules though? I guess the club too.. but still I’m surprised they’re this definitive. Particularly because he’s rarely depicted this young

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Jon Oliver?

Unfortunately, I recently learned that line was popularized by Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar and there's zero minimal evidence it was ever actually said.

The series Rome apparently has a very accurate (from what we know) portrayal of Caesar's asssassination. He doesn't say anything.

I saw it the other day but learned about it long ago. The BM likely did save some of the marbles taken from Greece, but it's no longer the case.

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Not really, they mentioned the byzantines. The byzantine empire was the breakaway empire of the eastern Roman empire. It controlled Greece for a while as well. The line at which you say when byzantines were byzantines vs Romans is pretty murky.

Yea but what have the Romans ever done for us?

Then that's not Byzantine era at all.

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I'm of the opinion that everything should be returned, unless a country/culture asks that another country keep it safe for them because of times of instability or what have you. But if it gets returned and then gets destroyed... it was always theirs to preserve or destroy. Is it a tremendous loss? Yes, but such is the way of human history.

It's a 2000 year old statue of Blaine Gibson

Nobody take your eyes off the British Museum!!!

Fun useless fact but the Greek statues and the later Roman reproductions and/or imitations were almost always painted, just the paint tended to wear away over the years and there has been a willful ignorance to the paint fragments left remaining by earlier art historians.

British museum will be by shortly to collect it.

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Yes, actually. He was renamed in an attempt to placate Hera. It didn't work.

The Eastern Roman Empire spoke Greek. This was Heracles.

My son does the same. Every…single…time. Not sure how old she is but if young check out the podcast Greeking out by National Geographic kids. He was obsessed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suetonius

Yeah, its extremely unlikely, but it comes from a roman historian

It reinforces the point that upper crust romans liked speaking greek

Honestly, the British Museum is kinda boring. The exhibits have no context, they don't really tell a story or teach us about life in ancient societies. It's just a collection of old stolen stuff, like some ancient hoarder's attic but with everything behind glass boxes.

London's other museums are excellent, though. The Science Museum is amazing.

Lol @ the person in the comments section of that article calling for it to be smashed because it's a "false idol."

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They were not taken to teach the public, they were trophies. For context you'd have to read about them and put the pieces together yourself.

This is headed to the British Museum in London where it 'belongs', right?

Alright but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?!?!

Bunch of people misreading the article. It says the statue dates back to the 2nd century CE (100-200 CE), the peak of the Roman Empire. It is not stated where in the Empire the statue was originally built, as this is not known. However it was later used to adorn a Greek building during the Byzantine period around the 8th or 9th century. During this time, the locals would have referred to it as Heracles.

Greeks continued to exist and create art during the roman era.

It controlled Greece and was controlled by greeks for most of the East Roman empire's history.

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Cant wait to go see it at the British History Museum

2nd century AD was Peak empire, we're talking Trajan/Hadrian times.

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I know, these scales always blow my mind a bit. When I read it I was just thinking that when this was being carved the Pyramids were already more than 2000 years old.

>The byzantine empire was the breakaway empire of the eastern Roman empire.

It wasn't a "breakaway empire" of the Eastern Roman Empire, it was the Eastern Roman Empire. Strange wording. It's not like the "Byzantines" 'broke away' from the Eastern Empire, they were the same thing.

ELI5 I thought Heracles supposed to be bearded? All I know about youth looking gods supposed to be Apollo.

>Remember that even though they bastardized the gods

Romans didn't bastardise anyone. Their Gods are native to the region and were later syncretized with the Greek ones.

I apologize for confusion, I didn’t mean it in that the Greeks spoke Latin so much as that if a Latin speaking artist sculpted it, would we not use his terms? I know the two are essentially the same, but wouldn’t the distinction matter? Or did they recognize that Ares and Mars were the same entity?

Except it's a Roman made statue apparently so it might well have been Hercules.

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That's a valid argument. I think what we need is a multinational museum collective that owns and loans a large number of antiquities. It would be horrible to live in a world where no museum has any significant foreign objects. So for example the met could donate 1 piece to the collective which would entitle then to one loan. They then apply to take out a specific piece, and it gets moved to the Met for 1 year. Country of origin always moves to the top of the list for taking out there own pieces.

A system like this would alow people all over the world to continue to be inspired by foreign artifacts while still not depriving the country of origin from seeing those artifacts. Of course this is not a perfect system, many artifacts should simply be returned to their country if origins and there would be a lot of details to work out but with growing globalization I do think it's important for artifacts of world history to be available to the world.

A Greek living under Roman occupation might very well have identified as a Roman. They would've been a "Greek Roman" and held both things as significant labels of identity.

In the same way Peurto Ricans are also Americans. One identity does not drive out the other nor does one necessarily come first for many people.

This would've been 200 years before dioclecian so lowercase eastern. The aristocracy of the area would likely have spoke Latin and both languages would've been present.

The lingua franca of the East Roman Empire was Greek, throughout its history with Latin only used for administrative purposes. It would have been Herakles, son of Dias.

Small nitpick but that is a statue of Heracles then, not Hercules.

In pre-Roman and early-Roman years, they called themselves Hellenes ("Greeks" is a complicated name, never used by Gre...Hellenes themselves, even today).

Later they called themselves Rhomaioi, which essentially meant "We're actually Hellenes, but the church calls us pagans, so we're Rhomaioi *wink*"

The term "Hellenes" was revived in the 15th century in an attempt to rouse rebellion against Ottoman occupiers and to re-assert Orthodox Christianity.

This is just some dumb reasoning. If an American went to Finland and made a statue of Santa Claus there, complete with a name plate referring to it as such, at least 99% of Finnish people would still refer to it as Joulupukki (the Finnish word for Santa Claus), because that's their name for the character and has been for longer than America has existed as a country in its current state. You will pretty much never change people's use of a word like that when they've already been using their own word for them for centuries. If the creation was an original, sure, they would probably respect the foreign name enough to at least try and pronounce it, but they're not going to stop using a name they've been using forever for the newer, foreign version. Especially so in the case of Herakles which is originally a Greek creation in the first place.

The Parthenon Marbles were taken from Athens illegally. Lord Elgin obtained a "firman" (document) from the Sultan in Constantinople that gave him permission to take plaster casts of the friezes.

He went to Athens, showed the local authorities and insisted that it meant he could take the entire thing. He then proceeded to use untrained local labour to crowbar the friezes off the Parthenon.

He loaded them onto two boats, bound for London. One of the boats sank off the coast of Italy.

London was originally not interested and so he kept them in his "back yard" at his stately home in Scotland. Eventually, the British Museum agreed to buy them (fence). In the 1930s they found that everything was badly damaged from being left outside in Scottish weather. So they used untrained labour to clean them.

They then found this "strange pink tint" and used untrained labour once more to get the tint off using scouring pads and caustic soda!

It turns out the pink tint was remnants from the original paint from 2000 years earlier.

This story blows the theory that the BM "protected" (and continues to "protect") Greece's heritage clean out of the water. One can only imagine what they have done with the treasures from other civilisations.

Flex on him by saying his name before Heracles was Alcides.

Let me know when your report on everything in the BM is ready.

Yes, I agree that would be a good system. Museums lend things to each other all the time and they get money in exchange. Wouldn't it be better if that money went to the artifacts' country of origin?

I think we should offer to repatriate everything, and if those countries can't afford to preserve those items and would like help, there should be a trust set up by the museum where they're being displayed and a percentage of ticket sales should go into that trust. Then the trust could be used to cover the cost of building a facility/museum in the artifacts' home country so they can be safely returned.

It breaks my heart that people are being deprived of the experience of seeing important pieces of their own cultural history. That should be the priority, in my opinion.

Suetonius reports two traditions. According to one Caesar says nothing, according to the other he says "and you, son" in Greek. Suetonius doesn't elaborate on these traditions nor does he show preference for one over the other. One might note the similarity with the quote "the die is cast" (when Caesar crossed the Rubicon) which Plutarch claims Caesar uttered in Greek and not in Latin (it seems Caesar choose the quote from a play by the Greek playwright Menander).

It's because that statue likely ends up on the thumbnail and looks a lot cooler/more impressive.

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