Just as all of the Warsaw Pact members were liberated from the Nazis in World War 2, so was Greece. Despite this, and their border continuity with Bulgaria, Greece was never a Soviet satellite state and was much more closely aligned with NATO. Why did this happen instead of Greece coming into the sphere of influence of the USSR?

In Thucidydas History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucidydas says in the first page of chapter 7, introducing the subject of the plague of Athens, that, “it first began, it is said, in the parts of Ethiopia above Egypt, and thence descended into Egypt and Libya and into most of the king's country.” Here he states that the the plague descended from Ethiopia to Egypt (which is to the north, not the south, of Ethiopia) so I am wondering as to how the ancient Greeks in the 5th century viewed their geographical position and if they had seen Africa as to the north, not the south, of Greece. And also is that king he is mentioning the king of Persia, or rather a local king (knowing that in that period Egypt was a Persian colony). Thank you.

As I read Josephus, I found that Josephus claimed in Against Apion that Cleopatra VII was hostile to Jews, but no other sources, not even Josephus’ other books, claimed that. If she was really hostile to Jews, then it would be found in many other sources.

Having recently rewatched the film, something stuck out at me. There is a scene in which the three men who have been praised for raising the flag are speaking to Bud Gerber, a fictional representative of the US Treasury. Gerber is explaining the importance of the flag raising and the tour to be undertaken by the three men to the war effort and in particular the need to sell war bonds. When one of the men calls the whole situation a farce, Gerber responds with the following:

"The last four bond drives came up so short we just printed money instead. Ask any smart boy on Wall Street, he’ll tell ya. Our dolls next to worthless, we’ve borrowed so much and nobody’s lending anymore. Ships aren’t being built, tanks aren’t being built, machine guns, bazookas, hand grenades. Zip. You wanna go back to your buddies? Well stuff some rocks in your pockets before you hit the plane cause that’s all we’ve got left to throw at the Japanese and don’t be surprised if your plane doesn’t make it off the runway because the fuel dumps are empty and our good friends the Arabs are only taking bullion. If we don’t raise 14 billion dollars this wars over by the end of the month."

This clearly presents the economic situation in early to mid 1945 as very dire. Is Gerber's representation accurate? Was the United States in a fiscal crisis in regards to its war spending?

This has been a topic I've been considering for a while.

How did religious leaders (Popes, Bishops, Muslim leaders) get away with behaviour that contradicted their outward piousness?

Example - Borgia Papacy - how did they reconcile a pope having children with the celebacy expected of such an individual?

For me, it would seem common sensical that such a leader would be criticised, ousted or otherwise condemned.

I have been reading about the lack of physical evidence supporting the exodus narrative (and after where the Israelites are living in the Sinai desert), and some difficulties raised with looking in the Sinai desert for evidence are:

1. since the desert is not static and the landscape changes a fair bit over time, as well as water reserves potentially drying up etc. It is hard to track the movements of the group as described via descriptions of landmarks in the bible and related texts.

2. the Israelites would have been poor slaves with almost no material possessions beyond what they could carry on them as they left, so the physical record of their time in the desert would not have been as significant, especially not since they were nomadic, and so traces of their activity would not have had the chance to accumulate like it would have in an established settlement.

I'm just wondering about what evidence we should expect to find if a population of 1500000+ lived in this region for 40 years. Given the lack of material possessions etc. Is there anything in particular a group like this is completely expected to leave behind that archeologists would be on the lookout for, but never found?

And finally: are there any similar scenarios that do have archeological evidence to refer to, and what did it look like?

edit: I originally put 600000+ as the figure for the amount of israelites, buit forgot that it was counting only men, so I upped it a bit to account for women and children

As per title, i was wondering why many books and films, like Harry Potter use latin (or some fake language that sound like medieval latin) as the language of magic. From what I know the romans were a quite pragmatic people, and did not pay much attention to religion or folklore.

If it is possible to depict the cost in current US dollars, how costly would it be to maintain the army which Edward the Black Prince used (about 6,000 men) to defeat the French at Poitiers (1356) for a month.

Also, how costly would it be for the French to maintain the force they used at Poitiers (about 11,000 men) for a month?

Another part of the question: how big was England's total fighting force around 1356? How much would it cost them to maintain that army for a month? Same question for the French around 1356.

Thanks to their meticulous record keeping, we know so much about the daily lives and history of ancient Romans. Are there still major aspects about this civilisation that remain a mystery to us? Any missing gaps in our knowledge?

NB: this is my first post on Reddit, I hope its fine.

A world wonder, and a sight to see no doubt; at the time, did it serve its purpose?

There seems to be many movies about Abraham Lincoln, movies about modern Presidents, an entire series about John Adams, but not really much about George Washington. I was curious if this has something to do with American culture keeping him almost mythological in nature, or if we just don't know a lot about him.

I know that this is a period of great decline for Sparta, already 100 years since Leuktra. I also know that even in their height they were reluctant to move too far outside the Peloponnese, So why Crete? And do we know how many Full Spartan citizens were on the campaign? Thanks

I suppose my underlying question here is whether it has occurred to anyone that the experiences detailed by many of these women were actually experiences of sexual assault and trauma? Often these women don't identify Satan directly but talk about other supernatural or folkloric beings lying with them against their wills, and perhaps I'm reading too much into it or being anachronistic or ahistorical, but is it possible that these women had no other means of expressing or coping with what had happened to them other than ascribing the action to a supernatural being or Satan?

I know around the mid 1800s that a bunch of Chinese headed west to California, but as my knowledge goes, it was almost entirely economic reasons happening within China and the gold rush. And being very poor at geography I can only guess that the far east of Russia was just 'too cold' to permit larger travel (Vladivostok's port was only active during summer and built only after the gold rush had already ended). Plus it likely wasn't economically suffering as much as China.

But are the reasons as simple as that? Surely some Russians had emigrate in decent amounts. This is a question that's been bothering me since highschool but have found extremely little on

Anyone can post a title starting with "It is known that X had/did X, therefore what did Y do" etc. The claims in the title can influence anyone reading only the title (majority of Reddit users) without any fact check. This will enhance the spread of misinformation and disowning of the r/AskHistorians subreddit since it is built upon the trustworthiness of the given knowledge.

TLDR: The title claims need to be moderated or banned.

Documentary hypothesis vs Gmirkin's model isn't even close in my eyes but I'm more interested in the professional reception of Gmirkin's ideas. Why aren't they more widely discussed and known?

I know the term is relatively recent, starting with Harding. Irrespective of that, as an immigrant it always struck me as odd how much the men who broke this country away from the British Empire seem to be treated as almost mythical figures. This seems particularly odd given the values of equality and "of the people" which are so foundational to the US.

Given the recency of the pledge of allegiance for example, I'm curious as to whether this quasi-sainthood is recent and, if so, what led to it. I'm also obviously open to being incorrect in my perception.

Van Buren was of Dutch extraction and English wasn’t even his first language. Granted there were powerful Dutch families as holdovers from New Netherlands who were prominent in New York, local politics are very different from national politics. Given the United States history of xenophobia (Irish, Chinese, Italian etc.), how did Van Buren rise to the highest office in the land, the presidency?

I am not sure if this is a common experience, but I have heard from multiple people that children used to "develop faster" in the past i.e. reach physical maturity quicker. This statement is usually made in the context of child marriages, I feel like usually as a justification for the behavior. I can understand the logic of people reaching "emotional maturity" quicker in the past. More responsibilities, more problems on your mind, you grow up quick. I do not really understand the argument for quicker development physically. The human life-cycle is the human life-cycle, and while nutrition & exercise can understandably impact the "quality" of physical development I do not understand how past living conditions could accelerate development by 5-7 years so that 13-15 year olds were "really" adults.

I've heard some historians argue that we should not evaluate pederasty according to our contemporary morals, current understanding of healthy childhood development, etc, because the cultural context was entirely different. Some have even gone so far to say that pederasty was fundamental to education of the youth in Athens, and responsible for its success. However, others argue that basic human psychology cannot have changed much over the last few millennia, and the consensus among contemporary psychologists is that sexual contact between adolescent boys and much older men causes lasting trauma, including PTSD. I even read an anecdote of an ancient boy driven to suicide when his "mentor" publicly called attention to sexual acts he did to him.

So my question is: what was the psychological impact of pederasty on boys in ancient Greece?

Note: ideally we'd be able to reference hard facts like x% of boys in the pederastic system suffered from PTSD as adults, the suicide rate increased by y% over boys who were not part of it, etc. Since social sciences were not developed back then, I recognize it is impossible to make such claims. However, I would prefer an answer that at least attempts to answer this question about the population as a whole while taking into account the bias of writers at the time and the bias in what was written down at all, rather than an answer which merely collects a few anecdotes about individuals who did well/poorly later in life. I welcome discussions of methodology!

In the Stanley Roger's song 'Barretts Privateers' the titular Barrett receives a letter of marque in 1778 (presumably from king george), gathers a bunch of local fishermen to crew his decrepit ship and sets off from Halifax, targeting 'yankee' shipping in the Caribbean. It ends poorly.

There are several excellent answers on this sub about 1600s piracy but by 1778, with the golden age of piracy long since over, I have two questions:

1. What would he have done to earn a letter of marque? Was there a request process? Would anyone care that his ship was in poor repair?

2. what sort of shipping would he hope to stumble across and (I assume) capture? What sort of plunder would be considered a 'good haul'?