HISTORY89 - Ten More Historical Myths

Two blogs ago, I wrote about ten historical myths, that though not true, persist in our general discourse today.  I received a positive response from that blog, and found ten more myths that I wanted to write about.

 

After a short introduction, I will discuss these ten additional historical myths in approximate historical order.

My principal sources include: “The 20 Greatest Historical Myths,” writespirit.net; “Myths Debunked: 5 Widely Believed Tales about Historical Figures,” blog.gale.com; “7 Things People Ge Wrong About American History,” time.com; “10 Popular History Myths (You Probably Believe),” whatculture.com; “Gladiator,” “Date of birth of Jesus,” and “Albert Einstein,” Wikipedia.com; “Spanish in the U.S.,” pbs.org; “Early English Settlements,” joliet86.org; “A brief history of tobacco," edition.cnn.com; “Potato Fun Facts & History,” bsffl.com; “Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence,” history.com; “Constitutional Republic,” legaldictionary.net; “Five myths about slavery,” washingtonpost.com; “Slaves in New England,” medfordhisotrical.org; “The Halloween myth of the War of the Worlds panic,” bbc.com; “women’s rights movement,” Britannica.com; plus, numerous other online sources.

 

Myth:  Roman gladiators were slaves.

A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals.

There's a nearly-universal false notion (probably promulgated in movies) about what it meant to be a Roman gladiator.  First and foremost, a gladiator was a slave.  He was forced to become a gladiator, fighting in brutal matches for aristocratic Roman spectators, and those wealthy aristocrats gave the final thumbs-up or thumbs-down to determine whether he lived or died.

Yes, some gladiators were slaves.  But many gladiators were free citizens - aristocrats, even - who voluntarily signed up to fight.  Gladiator matches were a spectator sport, and if the gladiator were successful, there was incredible wealth, fame, and glory to be had in the ring.  Gladiators were celebrated as entertainers and commemorated in precious and commonplace objects throughout the Roman world.

It wasn’t easy for gladiators to stand out.  Each warrior fought only two to three times per year, usually in events featuring 10 to 13 gladiator fights - with each individual match lasting about 10 to 15 minutes.  But some, owing to their extravagant personalities, personal backgrounds, or memorable performances, gained lasting renown.

Contrary to popular perception, gladiators didn’t necessarily battle to the death.  Instead, fighting progressed until one of them surrendered, usually by holding up a single finger.  Only between 10 and 20 percent of gladiators died during matches - a reflection, in part, of their high financial value to investors. 

Note:  Investors were usually the owner or business manager of a school for gladiators.  New gladiators “went to school,” were fed a good diet, had medical care, and received several months of training.  

Their sponsors made gladiators pack on weight so that they could sustain shallow, non-lethal cuts in their subcutaneous fat. The crowds liked blood, and they were going to give it to them!

Many gladiators were free citizens who voluntarily signed up to fight.

 

The origin of gladiatorial combat is open to debate.  There is evidence of it in funeral rites during the Punic Wars of the 3^rd century BC, and thereafter it rapidly became an essential feature of politics and social life in the Roman world.  Its popularity led to its use in ever more lavish and costly games.

The gladiator games lasted for over 650 years, reaching their peak between the 1^st century BC and the 2^nd century AD.  Christians disapproved of the games because they involved idolatrous pagan rituals.  The popularity of gladiatorial contests waned and disappeared in the 5^th century, with the decline of the Roman Empire.

 

Myth:  Jesus was born on December 25^th.

Even if you're not a Christian, the sheer number of Christians in the world (2.38 billion in 2020) - coupled with the widespread commercialization of the Christmas holiday - pretty much guarantees that most people "know" that Christmas is Jesus' birthday.  Yes, Christmas is meant to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but there is no evidence whatsoever, biblical, or otherwise, that He was actually born on December 25^th. 

There is no evidence that Jesus was born on December 25^th.

 

Christ wasn't initially tied to Christmas, at all.  Early Christians said nothing of Jesus's birthdate.  The earliest reference to his date of birth scholars have found dates to AD 336, when the church of Rome put on a nativity festival.  Supposedly, in AD 350, Pope Julius I asserted officially that Jesus’s birthdate was December 25^th, but this claim has not been proven.

Historians disagree on how December 25 became associated with Christmas.  The most reasonable explanations (at least to me) relate to festivals and celebrations already occurring in mid to late December in the Roman world. 

Consider that the middle of winter has long been a time of celebration around the world.  Centuries before the arrival of the man called Jesus, many people rejoiced during the winter solstice, when the worst of the winter was behind them, and they could look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight. Prior to and through the early Christian centuries, winter solstice festivals were the most popular of the year, in many European pagan (polytheistic) cultures.

Note:  The winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year.  In the Northern Hemisphere, it takes place between December 20 and 23, depending on the year. 

In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia - a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture - was celebrated.  Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down.  For a month, enslaved people were given temporary freedom and treated as equals.  Business and schools were closed so that everyone could participate in the holiday's festivities.

Also, consider that in the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated.  In particular, during the first two centuries of Christianity, there was strong opposition to recognizing birthdays of martyrs, including Jesus.  Numerous Church Fathers offered sarcastic comments about the pagan custom of celebrating birthdays, when, in fact, saints and martyrs should be honored on the days of their martyrdom - their true “birthdays,” from the Church’s perspective.

All of that changed in the fourth century when the Church officially adopted December 25 as the official date when Christians would celebrate the birth of Jesus.  Why the change?  The reasons are still debated (the Bible provides no clue), but a generally accepted belief is that December 25 was chosen to adopt and absorb the traditions of Rome’s popular existing pagan Saturnalia festival, and other pagan festivals around the world that were celebrated at the time of the winter solstice.

Today, Christmas is celebrated annually on December 25, having evolved as both a sacred religious holiday and a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon. 

See my blog on the history of Christmas at https://bobringreflections.blogspot.com/2022/11/history66-christmas.html.

 

Myth:  England had permanent settlements in continental America before Spain.

This misconception probably persists because the first English settlements in America opened the door for subsequent European settlement along the east coast of present-day America, and expanded inland to form settlements that eventually became the original 13 colonies (states) of the United States of America. 

But the Spanish established the first permanent settlement in America 42 years before the English.

Led by Ponce de León, the Spanish first arrived in 1513 in the present-day continental United States on the Florida peninsula and returned in 1520 for further exploration.  By 1565, they had established their first permanent colony, Saint Augustine, Florida, under the leadership of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. Between 1520 and 1570, the Spanish vigorously explored the Atlantic coast, with specific explorations taking place in the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, and along the New England coast.

Artist rendering of Saint Augustine in 1671.

 

The earliest Spanish explorations of the present southwestern U.S. date to 1540 by Francisco Coronado.  Juan de Oñate followed in 1598, establishing the first permanent European settlement in New Mexico at San Juan Pueblo.  Santa Fe was founded in 1610.

In addition to the Spanish, other European nations had explored the northern east coast of future America, starting in 1497 with Italian John Cabot.  Almost a century later, it was the English who sought to make settlements there.

In 1585, Roanoke, an island off the coast of North Carolina, became the first English settlement.  But no one knows what happened to its settlers.  No signs of them remained when resupply ships from England came to find them later.  That is why, today, Roanoke is called the “lost colony.”

More than 20 years after the attempt to settle Roanoke, 105 Englishmen arrived in present-day Virginia seeking gold and other riches. They founded a settlement called Jamestown in 1607.  Despite many hardships, Jamestown became the first successful English colony in North America.

A few years later in 1620, a group of 102 English people arrived in present-day New England.  They built a settlement called Plymouth, in what is now the state of Massachusetts.  Most of these people had left England to seek religious freedom.  They became known as the Pilgrims, people who go on a religious journey.

 

Myth:  Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco and the potato to Europe.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English adventurer, writer, and nobleman.  After growing close to Queen Elizabeth I during his time in the army, Raleigh was knighted in 1585, and became captain of the guard.

During Elizabeth’s reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America:  1) 1584 - exploration of North America from North Carolina to present-day Florida; the region was named Virginia in honor of Elizabeth; 2) 1585 and 3) 1587 - sent expeditions of colonists to Roanoke (which as noted above disappeared mysteriously).  Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led unsuccessful expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to the Orinoco River basin in South America in search of the golden city of El Dorado. 

Tobacco and the potato were introduced to Europe well before Sir Walter Raleigh had anything to do with the Americas.

Tobacco was first used by the peoples of the pre-Columbian Americas, who apparently cultivated the plant and smoked it in pipes for medicinal and ceremonial purposes.  Christopher Columbus brought a few tobacco leaves and seeds with him back to Europe, but most Europeans didn't get their first taste of tobacco until the mid-16^th century, when adventurers and diplomats like France's Jean Nicot - for whom nicotine is named - began to popularize its use.

Pictures like this promulgate the myth that Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to Europe.

 

The first successful commercial tobacco crop in America was cultivated in Virginia in 1612 by Englishman John Rolfe.  Within seven years, it was the colony's largest export.  Over the next two centuries, the growth of tobacco as a cash crop fueled the demand in North America for slave labor.

In 1536, Spanish Conquistadors in Peru discovered the flavors of the potato and transported potatoes to Europe.  At first, the vegetable was not widely accepted.  Towards the end of the 16^th century, families of Basque sailors began to cultivate potatoes along the Biscay coast of northern Spain.  It took nearly four decades for the potato to spread to the rest of Europe.  Eventually, agriculturalists in Europe found potatoes easier to grow and cultivate than other staple crops, such as wheat and oats.  Most importantly, it became known that potatoes contained most of the vitamins needed for sustenance.

Potatoes arrived in England’s New World colonies in the 1621 when the Governor of the Bahamas sent a gift box containing potatoes to the governor of the colony of Virginia.  The first permanent potato patches in North America were established in 1719, most likely near Londonderry (Derry), New Hampshire, by Scotch-Irish immigrants.  From there, the crop spread across the country. 

 

Myth:  America became independent from England on July 4, 1776.

America’s founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But declaring independence was not the same thing as being independent.  Following the end of the Revolutionary War, in September 1783, the U.S. signed a peace treaty with Britain, and the United States formally became an independent nation.

Let’s review the major events leading to true independence:

After the British gained victory over the French in the Seven Years' War in 1763, tensions and disputes arose between Britain and their American colonies over the lack of political representation in the homeland and policies related to trade, trans-Appalachian settlement, and taxation.  In mid-1774, Britain closed Boston Harbor, and revoked Massachusetts' charter, which placed the colony under the British monarchy's direct governance.  All of these issues strengthened American Patriots' desire for independence from Britain. 

On April 19, 1775 the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The news of the bloodshed rocketed along the eastern seaboard, and thousands of volunteers converged - called "Minute Men" - in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Continental Army was formed on June 14, 1775 by a resolution of the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia after the war's outbreak.  The Continental Army was created to coordinate military efforts of the colonies in the war against the British, who sought to maintain control over the American colonies.  General George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and maintained this position throughout the war.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published “Common Sense,” an influential political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence.  In the spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for colonies to form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain.  Two days later, on July 4, the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted.

But the Revolutionary War would last for five more years.  Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the surprise attack across the Delaware River on Trenton, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781.   On September 3, 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.

Emanuel Leutze’s famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware for a surprise attack on Trenton - a key Revolutionary War event in the march to true independence.

  

Myth:  The U.S. is a democracy.

The truth is the United States is a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.

Paraphrasing from the online Legal Dictionary:  A constitutional republic is a form of government in which the head of the state, as well as other officials, are elected by the country’s citizens to represent them. Those representatives must then follow the rules of that country’s constitution in governing their people.  Like the U.S. government, a constitutional republic may consist of three branches - executive, judicial, and legislative - which divide the power of the government so that no one branch becomes too powerful.

A country is considered a constitutional republic if:

·         It has a constitution that limits the government’s power

·         The citizens choose their own heads of state and other governmental officials

Many people believe that the United States is a democracy, but it is actually the perfect example of a constitutional republic.  A pure democracy would be a form of government in which the leaders, while elected by the people, are not constrained by a constitution as to its actions.

The Founding Fathers thought change should occur slowly, as many were afraid that a "democracy" - by which they meant a direct democracy – would allow a majority of voters at any time to trample rights and liberties.  They thought democracy could take the form of mob rule that could be shaped on the spot by a demagogue.  Therefore, they devised a written Constitution that could be amended only by a super majority.

We do not have pure democracy or “rule by the majority” because we have constitutionally protected rights that cannot be voted away, operate under rule of law, and have limited government with limited powers.

Our founding was saved by the skill of our “political pilots” to craft a compromise between popular will and the rule of law.  We are democratic, but we are not a democracy.  We the People are those whose consent is required, but the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land.

The Pledge of Allegiance, which was written in 1892 and adopted by Congress in 1942 as the official pledge, refers to the U.S. as a republic.

 

Myth:  Slavery was confined to the South.

Not true.  Enslaved people were brought into New England throughout the entire colonial period, and slavery existed throughout the colonies before the American Revolution.  Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island were the three New England states with the largest slave population.  Slaves accounted for as much as 30 % of the population in South Kingston, Rhode Island, and were a significant presence in Boston (10%), New London (9%), and New York (7.2%).

Slavery was integral to the building of New York City and Newport and Providence, Rhode Island.

As the United States expanded westward after the Revolutionary War, virtually every new state - south and north - practiced slavery to a degree.  See the figure below.

Virtually every U.S. state practiced slavery in 1830.

 

For nearly two hundred years the North maintained a slave regime that was more varied than that of the South. 

Rather than using slaves as primarily agricultural labor, the North trained and diversified its slave force to meet the needs of its more complex economy.  Owned mostly by ministers, doctors, and the merchant elite, enslaved men and women in the North often performed household duties in addition to skilled jobs.

From the 17^th century onward, slaves in the North could be found in almost every field of Northern economic life.  They worked as carpenters, ship builders, sailmakers, printers, tailors, shoemakers, coopers, blacksmiths, bakers, weavers, and goldsmiths. 

Slavery in the North lasted well into the 1840s.

 

Myth:  Einstein was a lousy student who failed math in school.

Albert Einstein (1879 -1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is widely held to be one of the greatest and most influential scientists of all time.  Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics, and was thus a central figure in the revolutionary reshaping of the scientific understanding of nature that modern physics accomplished in the first decades of the 20^th century.  He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect,” a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory.  In a 1999, poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World, Einstein was ranked the greatest physicist of all time.  His intellectual achievements and originality have made the word Einstein broadly synonymous with genius.

Where the myth that Einstein failed math in school came from is unknown.  The truth is that Einstein's math scores in school were even better than his science scores.  He wasn't a fan of school early on, but that hardly equates to him being bad at it.  He did fail an entrance exam for Zurich Polytechnic Institute, but only because it was in French, and he wasn’t fluent in French.  He did outstanding on the math section, but failed the language, botany, and zoology section. 

Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein excelled at math and physics at an early age.

 

In fact, Einstein excelled at physics and mathematics from an early age.  By age 11, he was reading college-level physics textbooks.  He began teaching himself algebra, calculus, and Euclidean geometry when he was 12; he made such rapid progress that he discovered an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday.  A family tutor, Max Talmud, said that only a short time after he had given the twelve-year-old Einstein a geometry textbook, the boy "had worked through the whole book.  He thereupon devoted himself to higher mathematics ... Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high I could not follow.”  Einstein recorded that he had “mastered integral and differential calculus" while still just 14.  His love of algebra and geometry was so great that at 12, he was already confident that nature could be understood as a "mathematical structure.”

 

Myth:  Mass panic and hysteria swept the United States on the eve of Halloween in 1938, when an all-too-realistic radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds sent untold thousands of people into the streets or heading for the hills.

The radio show was so terrifying in its accounts of invading Martians wielding deadly heat-rays that it is remembered like no other radio program.  Or, more accurately, it is misremembered like no other radio program.  Yes, some Americans were frightened or disturbed by what they heard.  But most listeners, overwhelmingly, were not.  They recognized it for what it was - a clever and entertaining radio play.

The War of the Worlds dramatization was the inspiration of Orson Welles, director and star of the Mercury Theatre on the Air, an hour-long program that aired on Sunday evenings on CBS Radio.  Welles was 23 years old, a prodigy destined for lasting fame as director and star of the 1941 motion picture, Citizen Kane.  His adaptation of The War of the Worlds, a science fiction thriller written by HG Wells and published in 1898, was little short of brilliant.

What made the show so compelling was the use of simulated on-the-scene radio reports telling of the first landing of Martian invaders near Princeton, New Jersey, and their swift and deadly advance to New York City.  American audiences had become accustomed to news reports interrupting radio programs.  They had heard them often during the war scare in Europe in late summer and early autumn of 1938.  Welles played on this familiarity to stunning effect.  In doing so, he created a delicious and tenacious media myth.

It is estimated that six million people listened to The War of the Worlds dramatization.  Most listeners, by far, were not upset by the show.

Reading of contemporaneous newspaper reports reveals the fright that night was highly exaggerated.  Newspapers presented sweeping claims about thousands or even millions of panic-stricken Americans, but offered little supporting documentation. 

Newspaper headlines across America told of the terror that Welles' show supposedly created:

·         "Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact," declared the New York Times.

·         "Radio Fake Scares Nation," cried the Chicago Herald and Examiner. "US Terrorized By Radio's 'Men From Mars,'" said the San Francisco Chronicle.

Newspapers greatly exaggerated the effect of Orson Welles’ radio dramatization of War of the Worlds.

  

Despite its wobbly basis, the myth of mass panic remains steadfastly attached to The War of the Worlds program.  It is part of the lore of Orson Welles, the bad-boy genius who did his best work before he turned 30.

 

Myth:  The Woman’s Liberation movement was hostile to men.

No social movement, arguably, has been so misrepresented as the 1960s -1970s women’s rights movement.  In these myths, feminists were single, middle class, and white; mainly concerned with “sex issues,” such as pornography, abortion rights, sexual harassment, and rape; and hostile to men.  Each is wrong.

The feminism of that period was diverse in class and race from its beginnings.  Working-class, labor-union women - black, white, and Latina - were leaders in the 1960s revival of feminism.  Feminists did focus campaigns on sex issues but they often prioritized economic goals: better pay, especially in low-wage women’s jobs; equal access to higher-salary jobs, and traditionally male jobs; and medical care and sick leave.

With the leadership of Journalist Betty Friedan and writer and social activist Gloria Steinem, women called for honoring and valuing women’s unpaid family labor.  Experiencing the stress of combining unpaid and paid work, feminists campaigned for policies aimed to reducing that stress, such as paid parental leave, flexible schedules, and quality, affordable child care.

The Women’s Liberation movement was not hostile to men.

 

The women’s rights movement achieved much in a short period of time.  With the eventual backing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1965), women gained access to jobs in every corner of the U.S. economy, and employers with long histories of discrimination were required to provide timetables for increasing the number of women in their workforces.  Divorce laws were liberalized; employers were barred from firing pregnant women; and women’s studies programs were created in colleges and universities.  Record numbers of women ran for - and started winning - political office.  In 1972 Congress passed Title IX of the Higher Education Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program receiving federal funds and thereby forced all-male schools to open their doors to women and athletic programs to sponsor and finance female sports teams. And in 1973, in its controversial ruling on Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion.

In 2016, 60% of American women and 30% of men called themselves feminists or strong feminists.  Far from man-hating, feminists were confident that men could change, and that they would benefit from feminist policies, and they were right.

 

History is a set of lies, agreed upon.

Napoleon Bonaparte