Tag: Greek

Greeks tend to dress elegantly, so if you want to blend in, try to avoid looking cheap as well as overdressed or fussy. Greeks will check out the quality of your clothes and shoes, so this may be the time to leave your 10-year-old sweatpants and oversized concert t-shirts at home. Ditch the tie if y...

If you answered yes to all the above questions (or at least one), and you live in Greece, chances are you are hexed with the evil eye also known as ‘’matiasmenos’’. It works like this: A person can see something, for example a baby, and starts thinking how beautiful the ba...

Santorini is my all-time favorite island in Greece. I have been going there ever since I was a kid. For me, it’s the most romantic place in the world, hands down. I have attended many weddings in Santorini, and I thought it would be nice to share some related traditions. For starters, we...

When it comes to food, Greeks take matters into their own hands. That means they don’t follow recipes…they create their own recipes! For one thing, they don’t really measure quantities. 3 tablespoons of butter can easily turn into 6, 1 cup of sugar can easily turn into 2 ...

In Orphic cosmogony, the creation of the universe begins with Phanes being hatched from a world egg. One version of the myth states that Chronos, the personification of time, created a silver egg which was warmed by a snake. From the silver egg hatched the primordial deity Phanes. As the egg splits,...

The earliest known use of the classic Greek phalanx, a dense formation of infantry several ranks deep, occurred in the Battle of Hysiae in 668 BC. This revolutionary hoplite tactic at the time allowed the Argives to defeat the Spartans. In the 7th century BC, the Etruscans had already adopted the ph...

Well-known Greek gods like Zeus, Hades, Poseidon and Athena have made numerous appearances in books, movies, games, and other forms of media. Even demi-gods, like Perseus or Hercules, frequently star on the stage of popular culture. But some Greek gods have been unfairly lost to the wheels of tim...

Even in antiquity Westerners looked to India for wisdom. We know the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, tried to go there but had to turn back. Some people even claim — on scant evidence — that Jesus went there. But there’s only one Westerner from antiquity whom we know not only w...