The discovery of the ancient Greek city of Tenea | Hacker News Reader

The discovery of the ancient Greek city of Tenea

bbc.com

56 pointsclouddrover16 comments

> “We know Alaric, who was king of the Visigoths, raided Greece in 397AD,” he said. Historians believe he destroyed cities partly to gain wealth, but also to spread Christianity. “We discovered a coin that was issued by Alaric’s people. We also found a house that had been destroyed by a cannonball from around that year.”

... a cannonball in 397AD? The editing is a little strange.

I have no idea what the truth is, but its possible that they mean they have found a coin issued by Alaric and that the house was (later) destroyed by a cannonball?

That was my guess as well. Maybe a first part of a sentence was edited out by accident.

I am very happy that you spotted the cannon ball mistake. In fact, it was a projectile from a ballista. As for the coin, it was a barbaric imitation of a coin of Constantine I. According to most publications, it was issued in the 380s AD by a mint in the area occupied then by the Goths. Close to this coin, a late Roman arrowhead was found. These were surface finds a few meters from the excavated house that was burned down and the ballista projectile was recovered from its interior. (a member of the Tenea Project Team)

No cannons then, but it might have been destroyed by a projectile from a ballista (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista) or an onager (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onager_(weapon))

> “We know Alaric, who was king of the Visigoths, raided Greece in 397AD,” he said. Historians believe he destroyed cities partly to gain wealth, but also to spread Christianity

It's interesting to note that Alaric was an Arian [1], and not an Orthodox Christian (even though I don't know for sure if by 397 AD the term "Orthodox" was already in use or not). A fellow Arian Christian from that era and area (the Northern Balkans) was Ulfilas, who "is credited with the translation of the Bible into the Gothic Bible" [2]. If you're going to tell a random someone that the first Gothic alphabet was "invented" in present-day Northern Bulgaria not a lot of people will believe you, especially now when there's lots of talk about "origins" and borders keeping the people "not of our culture" out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfilas

>It's interesting to note that Alaric was an Arian [1], and not an Orthodox Christian (even though I don't know for sure if by 397 AD the term "Orthodox" was already in use or not)

It was used, but not with the current meaning at the time -- that appeared after the East/West split, half a millennium plus a few centuries later.

Before the split, it was occasionally seen early on (2-3 century) but it was more used after the council of Ephesus at the 5th century, again, with a different meaning than today. It was used from both "catholic" and "orthodox" populations (who were one faith at the time), against smaller denominations.

>If you're going to tell a random someone that the first Gothic alphabet was "invented" in present-day Northern Bulgaria not a lot of people will believe you, especially now when there's lots of talk about "origins" and borders keeping the people "not of our culture" out.

Well, the fact that nations influenced one another, doesn't mean it was some "free for all" back in the day either.

People at the time fought hard to keep people "not of their culture out", often with huge human toll -- from the Ancient Greeks fighting to keep the Xerxes etc armies out, to the Roman empire falling to barbaric tribes, all the way to the Battle of Vienna...

Romans would have very much preferred to keep their empire, than to have their cities plundered, suffer a millennium of decline and "dark ages", and gain some cultural artifacts and new recipes in exchange...

Fantastic. It makes me wonder what distinguishes Trojan culture from Greek culture when Trojans are living in Greece...

I am not an expert in ancient history, but if I am not wrong Greece was mostly composed of city states with different cultures, laws, family structures, sometimes temporary allied by militar leagues and temporary comercial agreements.... there never was a unified Greece or Greek culture until the greek population became the dominant ethnic in eastern Rome and became the new cultural elite at their own (even without Latins their identity was Christian Roman).

Even when fighting against Persians or being conquered under Alexander the Great where never truly unified, just common cultural traits.

The myth of a single unified Ancient Greek culture is a modern fabrication made during the rise of the nations in an effort of fabricate a common past for all folks living under modern states and give a legacy and an identity other than one of the provinces of Rome descendant of the ancient tribes who populated the peninsula. And my understanding is that the same happen with other European pre-romantic cultures like celts, Gauls, Britons, Germans and lots of other lost and forgotten mythological elements from Europe which were praised and recreated to differentiate modern states from their neighbors.

Greeks had unified culture. There was the same language, lifestyle, music, alphabet, commerce, art style, military style... They called people outside their culture "barbaros".

> language

dialects with regional substrate and vulgar varieties; koine written greek is a rather late standard, perhaps not byzantine, but koine literally means "written", in contrast to spoken.

> lifestyle

like what? Sedentary, sure.

> music

music-ians, who were not the same everywhere

> alphabet

again, regional variants exist, writing style wasn't fixed

> commerce

commerce is competition, so how could it be unified? associated towards outsiders, perhaps.

> military style

I wouldn't know about that, but Sparta vs Athens thousand years earlier would be a common counterexample

It's debatable how hellenized the Greeks on the anatolian cost were, the Lydiand, moesians and cetera. "barbaros" relates to speech first and foremost, though I am not buying the etymology. Speakers of other mother languages would have reasonable trouble getting the pronounciation right, so a Scythian, Tracian, Dalmation or otherwise "Celtic" Slave would appear hard to comprehend.

If you are generalizing a millenium of history, you are all history barbarians.

Your argument is "there were dialects and local variants". That was true everywhere until 1st WW and mass media.

Could we agree that Athens and Syracuse were more similar than Athens and Persepolis?

How about common myths and goods? Olympic games that paused wars? Delphi were in "center" of helenic world? And ancient debate if Macedonians are "true Greeks" or "barbarians"?

Innovations and technology were at the same level and culture was propagated and expanded easily among the different cities but they were by no means unified, look at the social and political structure of Athenas and compare it to the ones at Sparta, almost two different worlds, military technology, strategies and formation were different, heirs and inheritance had very different rules, arts were very different, even the view of life and understanding of the world was very different... they might have look similar as Phoenicians or other bronce age, early Iron Age tribes from the region, specially since through commerce and piracy there was a permanent exchange of products and ideas.

Myth about cities founded by Trojan people were common in Greek and Roman culture, and in derived cultures. Virgil's Aeneid is the most famous example. The Arvern tribe from Gaul also claimed a Troyan ascendance. There were legends that made King Arthur a descendant of Aeneas.

The Aeneid has the trojans fleeing the destruction of Troy travel all over Southern and Western Europe. According to pre-medieval legend, Britain is named after Brutus, a descendent of Aeneas.

I am trying to understand why the team believe the city was named Tenea. There is no explanation for this in the article.

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