Ancient Greece: Difference between revisions

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Content added Content deleted
VisualWikitext
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 23: Line 23:
* [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen]]: It was a common lament during the Peleponesian War that new weapons and tactics had made the manly phalanx fighting obsolete.
* [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen]]: It was a common lament during the Peleponesian War that new weapons and tactics had made the manly phalanx fighting obsolete.
* [[Love Potion]] (Eros's arrows)
* [[Love Potion]] (Eros's arrows)
* According to historian Victor Davis Hanson they were usually about five foot tall, and while they preferred a track star build as an image of male beauty usually had knotted muscles from pushing plows. They went into battle lugging tons of armor and, well, just look at [[Socrates]]. In other words they were [[Fridge Logic|Dwarves.]] On the other hand they did not live underground, they were great sailors, and were famous for philosophy and art. So maybe they were [[Fridge Brillance|both elves and Dwarves?]]
*[[Our Dwarves Are Different]]: According to historian Victor Davis Hanson they were usually about five foot tall, and while they preferred a track star build as an image of male beauty usually had knotted muscles from pushing plows. They went into battle lugging tons of armor and, well, just look at [[Socrates]]. In other words they were [[Fridge Logic|Dwarves.]] On the other hand they did not live underground, they were great sailors, and were famous for philosophy and art. So maybe they were [[Fridge Brillance|both elves and Dwarves?]]
* [[Physical God]]
* [[Physical God]]
* [[The Spartan Way]]
* [[The Spartan Way]]

Revision as of 21:05, 9 July 2017

File:Athenian caryatids 2616.jpg

Think of Crystal Spires and Togas, but without the crystal spires or the togas.

Home of columned temples, chiton-wearing gods, slinkily dressed goddesses, amazons, and bearded philosophers. Also home to mythic thong-wearing heroes who ride winged horses and do great deeds (all without getting either chafed or sunburnt). The Spartans live here too, and they're known for their brutal training methods, stylish slow-motion fighting techniques and for being manly enough to charge nearly naked into battle even when outnumbered 70 to 1. And they definitely aren't gay. Frequently confused with Ancient Rome by directors who just don't care.

In fact, this picture is a blend of two distinct periods; mythical Greece, conventionally said to end with the Trojan War around 1000BC, and classical Greece, home to the first philosophers. The "classical Greece" period itself tends to blend cultures that evolved and combined over the course of many centuries. Until Athens pulled the city-states together for defense against Persia, Greece didn't have a monolithic culture; it was the sum of the cultures of many independent city-states, all angling to make their patron gods the most important, and all ultimately blended together in the giant food processor of history. If you were to visit the Balkan Peninsula in, say, Pythagoras' day, you'd find that religious practices and social mores varied heavily depending on what city you were in.

Popular tropes that feature this time period are
  • Achilles' Heel
  • Achilles in His Tent
  • Action Girl (Artemis, Atalanta, Athena, the Amazons...)
  • An Aesop
  • Badass Army: The Spartans.
  • Bigger Is Better in Bed: Inverted to Tartarus and back. A small wang was a sign of virility, while being hung like a horse was just plain silly looking to them!
    • Though played straight with Priapus, a Greek god of fertility, who sported such a monster, and in fact is the source of the medical term for an unnaturally long-lasting erection. However Priapus' erection is also seen as a symbol of his incredibly boorish and vulgar nature, and all the other gods scorn him.
  • Cassandra Truth
  • Erastes Eromenos
  • Fatal Flaw
  • Forever War: War was at first a seasonal activity although Greeks preferred to have one battle a year and then adjust each cities turf accordingly so they could get back to their crops. After the Persian invasion showed them what war was like when an absolutist monarch imposed his ideas of war on it war became more bitter and all pervasive.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: It was a common lament during the Peleponesian War that new weapons and tactics had made the manly phalanx fighting obsolete.
  • Love Potion (Eros's arrows)
  • Our Dwarves Are Different: According to historian Victor Davis Hanson they were usually about five foot tall, and while they preferred a track star build as an image of male beauty usually had knotted muscles from pushing plows. They went into battle lugging tons of armor and, well, just look at Socrates. In other words they were Dwarves. On the other hand they did not live underground, they were great sailors, and were famous for philosophy and art. So maybe they were both elves and Dwarves?
  • Physical God
  • The Spartan Way
  • Training from Hell
Series set in this time period include:

Anime and Manga

  • Historie
  • So far, alluded to in Axis Powers Hetalia though Herakles/Greece's as yet unseen mother, Mama Greece. It's also implied that she eventually became the Byzantine Empire...only for her to die in Turkey's hands.


Comic Books


Film


Literature


Live Action TV


Theater


Video Games


Web Comics

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece?oldid=1532117"