![]() ![]() Their names, however, were utterly important and most of the times defined what the person would be like. Greeks did not terribly care for birthdays. Inhaling these fumes gave the Pythia hallucinations, so when she came out of the cave she would speak to the visitors and her words were interpreted as highly accurate prophecies. ![]() She would take one question per visitor, and then enter a cave, where toxic vapors emerged from cracks in the rock. There visitors were greeted by the Pythia, or high priestess of Apollo. The Temple was located in a hard-to-reach mountainous area. Would you trust a junkie to tell you what the future will bring? Well, ancient Greeks did, and would actually hike for days to reach the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in order for their fates to be divined. Appointed officials known as strategoi dealt with matters relating to war, where their authority was undisputed. However, not everything was freely decided by the citizens. It was also common practice for people to write the names of undesirable citizens in small fragments of pottery, called ostraka, to force the assembly to banish those people from the city. ![]() It is calculated that as many as 6,000 citizens could take part of any assembly, and they could all cast their votes by hand, although later on a system of stones that could be counted individually was put in place. People –and by people, I mean adult males who owned land in the area– gathered in an open-air space in order to debate the bills and legislation that would govern the city. But it worked very differently from our modern republics. It is a known fact that democracy was invented in Greece. What are some ancient Greek customs that we, today, would find odd or perhaps surprising? Here is a list of 10 of the most interesting traditions the ancient Greeks had. He did so in length because he thought that knowing a peoples’ traditions was important to know their history. The famous Greek historian Herodotus took a lot of trouble to describe the strange customs of the people of the known world in his Histories. ![]()
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