What Would Ancient Greek Fantasy Look Like?

 This has been a pretty good week. There was a dragon cake. I have a medical thing on Monday, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure out what’s wrong in my guts. I’m a bit apprehensive about that.

But it’s WAITANGI DAY, GUYZ!!

I thought about doing a thing about writing religious extremism, but I didn’t have time to develop that as much as I’d like for this week. 

I’m reading Obsidian Trilogy again, which is good! But it’s fairly within the lines of what people think of as “standard fantasy” and I had this thought in the last two hours of work on Friday. I *think* I’ve expressed something of the like before, but I don’t know that I’ve done a Note about it. So here we go!

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What Would Ancient Greek Fantasy Look Like?

There’s a common sentiment in the fantasy blogosphere about how cool it would be to see fantasy based on things that aren’t medieval Europe. And most of the time the suggestions are the Islamic Golden Age, or feudal Japan, or medieval China, or pre-colonialism Africa, or pre-Columbian Mesoamerica or something. And those are fine! But what about ancient Greece? Yeah, medieval fantasy grabs a lot of monsters from it, and prophecies and sometimes names and plot points. But it’s not really ever based on ancient Greece is it? And I had some thoughts about what a fantasy world based on ancient Greece would look like.

For starters:

ONE: City-States

One of the defining characteristics of the famous periods of ancient Greece were the dominance of city-states. That means that there aren’t really countries as we think of them, there were cities that controlled certain territories. The first times that Greece thought of itself as a country were when an invading force came in from somewhere else.

Now some fantasy books have city-states, but mostly it feels as if they just don’t know how to develop a country outside of its main city so it becomes one by default. They also don’t really get into how utterly weird these city-states are...in regards to each other. Because they share a language and a similar religion, but they don’t all have the same social structure, political framework, or religious traditions. Athens is the one we think of when it comes to ancient Greece, mainly because they had all the writers that survived. So we think of ancient Greece as democratic and philosophical and that’s… not how it all was.

[Also Athens was a democracy if you were a male citizen, and that’s it.]

So Sparta didn’t have a democracy, it had a monarchy with two kings, and also this whole thing with ephors, who could overrule kings on certain decisions. Also women could own property and participate in public life, including sports. Whereas in Athens, women couldn’t leave the house with the escort of a male relative or spouse. 

Different places also had different religious traditions. We think of Greek mythology like a canon, but it wasn’t. You read a mythology book now and it’ll tell you that the Greeks believed that Zeus was raised in Crete as a child, but there’s a tradition that he was actually born in Arcadia. And then there’s a claim that someone found Zeus’s tomb on Crete. Who the dominant gods would have been depended on where you were. Athena’s popular in Athens, obviously, but somewhere like Arcadia liked Pan, whereas in Delphi they clearly favored Apollo.

A fantasy world based on ancient Greece would reflect these differences. Maybe they wouldn’t have real-life parallels exactly like the real historical city-states, but a character from one city would be utterly baffled by the traditions and politics of a different city. Each city would be a different adventure because they’re all so very different from each other despite being superficially of the same culture.

TWO: Religion and Morality

Look, Greek religion is weird. Your high school classes and your Internet friends who like correcting people about it have probably a very simplified view of it. There were gods and spirits for just about everything--those nymphs and satyrs and wind spirits? Those are all very minor gods. Every river, every forest, every city, had a god. Sometimes a minor one, but there was one there. Which means that while the city might have official festivals dedicated to Apollo, there would be smaller local cults to gods that people the next city over have probably never heard of. 

I have a lot of questions about whether what we think of Greek myths were actually literally what the ancient Greeks believed. Like, how much of it was actual religion, how much of it were folk stories, and how much was dramatization? Remember, organized religion the way we think of it didn’t exist yet, not there--so it’s not like there’s a canon.

Morality also didn’t exist the way we think of it. It was there, obviously, but in terms of religion? The gods were good because they stood for order and civilization, whereas the monsters were things of the wild that tried to tear down that order. The notion of Good versus Evil, where the good guys are good because of their own virtues, that’s not as much a thing. Greek heroes and gods were often terrible in the stories to the people around them, but because of their rank in the pecking order and because they were civilized they got a free pass. Zeus is pretty bad as a husband and father by modern standards, but he was a model of fatherhood and kingship in ancient Greece: a man who had total control of his family, arbitrated disputes, could punish them if they misbehaved, and had the power to ward off any threats. That sounds like an abusive father to us, but in a strictly patriarchal society with strict social roles? Eh. 

And religious practices would be a lot weirder than what we think of. There are lots of really big festivals, involving parades, ceremonies, and sometimes mass sacrifices of animals that got blood everywhere. Oracles could turn away people if they weren’t of the right social status, or if the sacred animals didn’t feel like approving of them. People read flocks of birds for signs of the future.

Ancient Greek fantasy would incorporate some of this. I sincerely doubt that an honest interpretation would include the whole “rage at the gods” thing that is oh so common in fiction now. And if it did, it wouldn’t be that widespread--Socrates was killed for not respecting the gods enough, remember? Gods, even foreign gods, were to be respected--though those foreign gods might not be worshipped or maybe they’re assumed to be different forms of the Greek ones--the Greeks taught that the Egyptian gods were just the Olympians in disguise.

THREE: Warfare

Knights on horseback with swords? Nope! The hoplite! The chariot! The main weapon of war was the spear, and the main formation was the phalanx. If the phalanx broke, then you did too, and you fled until you could reform your position or you got away from the battle. And if you could figure out how to apply these advantages, like at Marathon or Thermopylae you’ve got a really formidable strategy on your side. If not… well….

Your sword? That’s your backup weapon if your spear fails or gets lost. The notion of guys dueling with swords wasn’t a Thing yet. When Hector and Achilles fought, they did so with spears. Heck, Zeus’s weapon is a spear. Mind you, that spear is a lightning bolt, but it’s a spear that he throws at his enemies. And not all spears are made for throwing. Quite a few weren’t, because that was your main weapon. And it’s a handy way to make sure enemies don’t get too close--and if they do, you’re hiding behind a massive shield that’s decorated with whatever you want on it (if you’re from a city-state that decorates shields).

Obviously weapons wouldn’t have been made of steel--bronze was the metal of choice for weapons. Which also meant you didn’t have a lot of large blades. A longsword made of bronze would be remarkably heavy, which is why most of the swords you see from ancient Greece are shorter. 

Armor would have had a lot of leather. It was still very protective! But nowhere near all-covering plate armor or chainmail that you see in plenty of fantasy stories.

And hopping back to city-states, whether or not you were a soldier depending on where you lived. Some city-states demanded that all able-bodied men give military service if they were citizens, and if they were slaves they were made to by the men who owned them. And some, like the Spartans, looked down on certain kinds of weapons, like bows.

There were mercenaries, which Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey plays with, though the reality wasn’t that there were a bunch of wandering badasses riding through the countryside and taking part in battles that were little more than Hollywood-style mass brawls.

I’m not saying that the modern wandering hero archetype can’t exist in a story in a fantasy world modeled after ancient Greece, but it would have to keep in mind that they’re not going to just be knights errant in a Mediterranean setting. There might be horseback riding, there might be a sword, but probably most of the battles wouldn’t look anything like what you’d see in Lord of the Rings and there would be much more emphasis on spears than swords.

FOUR: Miscellaneous Crap!

Some other things that I alluded to, or don’t know how to develop into more paragraphs:

-Extreme xenophobia! Everyone who isn’t Greek is a barbarian!

-So much slavery! Mind you, not usually based on race but still owning other people!

-Homosexuality, but often only socially acceptable in cerain ways! Including grown men grooming young boys!

-Olive oil! Feta! Pita bread!

-Sexism!

-Painted statues!

-Nudity in art! Nudity in sports!

-Dragons! Or rather, drakons!

-Here’s a list of monsters from Greek mythology!

-Beards! Curly hair!

-Plagues as signs of the gods’ displeasure!

-The god of the dead not being evil!

And other fun things!

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