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The most famous oracle in ancient Greece was undoubtedly the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi. However, Greek sources also mention another oracle active in the distant past, one who has mostly been forgotten today but was said to have predicted the Trojan War. This was the Erythraean Sibyl. Much confusion surrounds this legendary figure. So what do we know about her? The source for the Erythraean Sibyl Information for the Erythraean Sibyl, the oracle who predicted the Trojan War, primarily stems from a single source. This is Pausanias’s Description of Greece 10.12. Pausanias, a second-century AD geographer, offers detailed accounts...

Chapters:0:00 Formerly lost cities2:30 Ekster3:32 Suburbs of Pompeii5:01 Tripergole5:45 Helike and other drowned cities6:44 Tigranocerta7:12 Ptolemais Theron and Muziris7 Lost Cities (that could still be found) | 8:35toldinstone | 444K subscribers | 69,473 views | December 8, 2023

"I knew that scholars didn't really understand why it's called the Parthenon," says Utrecht University archaeologist Janric van Rookhuijzen, "so I started looking into a giant puzzle of ancient texts, inscriptions, and archaeological remains." His surprising, perhaps even heretical, theory suggests that "Parthenon" may not have originally referred to the structure we know today -- which is sometimes called the Great Temple of Athena -- but to part of an altogether different temple on the Acropolis. For van Rookhuijzen, the crux of the issue lies in the meaning of the Greek word parthenon -- "a room for virgins or unwed...

Numerous classical authors report that natural phenomena played an essential part in one of their most sacred religious rituals: the oracle at Delphi. According to the geographer Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.), for example, "the seat of the oracle is a cavern hollowed down in the depths … from which arises pneuma [breath, vapor, gas] that inspires a divine state of possession" (Geography 9.3.5). Over the past five years, a team of researchers -- a geologist, an archaeologist, a chemist and a toxicologist -- has put that claim to the test, making it much more likely that we will actually...