The ancient Greeks were not that great. I am a Classical Studies major and I am one of the Undergraduate Departmental Representatives for the department, so I study the writings and teachings of the venerated philosophers of Athens from millennia ago. That being said, I have come to know that a lot of what these vaunted heroes of intellectualism said is either just common sense, or flat out stupid.

Do not get me wrong—there are some things that they theorized that a modern person could not have thought of given all the time in the world. Plato’s allegory of the cave, for example, is something that has and will continue to define much of Western philosophy and intellectual thought, and I certainly could not have thought of it. But, for every Plato, there are a dozen Pyrrhos. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar, let me summarize the life and teachings of this historical figure. Pyrrho lived from the mid-fourth to the early third centuries BCE. He was one of the founders of skepticism. Pyrrho came to accept that any form of knowledge was impossible. Practicing what he preached, he never relied on his senses. And so we have countless stories of Pyrrho walking carelessly into a busy street or wandering dangerously close to the edge of perilous cliffs, not trusting anything.

Today, if you claimed that you could not trust your senses and just started wandering into oncoming traffic or disregarding any warning or advisory, we would institutionalize you—instead, we study people like Pyrrho because he lived 2,400 years ago. He and many others got lucky that they just happened to live before we did. To illustrate my point, here are a few more ‘insightful’ quotations from Athens’ finest: 

“Control thy passions lest they take vengeance on thee.” – Epictetus

“The way to gain a good reputation is to try to be what you desire to appear.” – Socrates

“Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.” – Democritus

These are just fancy ways of saying things that I figured out by the fourth grade, but that was in 2011, and not 500 BCE, so no one slaps my thoughts onto shirts or onto a quote website.

So why do I care and why should you? Well, there is a concerning tendency to justify a belief based on its age or based on the age of its progenitor. Some people will argue that the thought is good because some ancient Greek philosopher said it and not based on the merit of the statement itself. This is some kind of amalgamation of an appeal to tradition and an appeal to authority, but I took the LSAT long enough ago that I do not really remember the details behind those things. Regardless, Socrates tells us that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and I similarly contend that the unexamined quote is not worth parroting yourself.

What really got me thinking about this is the preponderance of stupid online accounts on Twitter and TikTok or whatever other platform that all have the same basic structure. They claim to promote some ancient Greek school of philosophy, most often Stoicism (a school of thought contending that virtue is the only good, and externals such as money, fame, reputation, material things, etc. are neither good nor bad), but framed in an eerily misogynistic way. Accounts like these will say the most boilerplate things that basically amount to “go outside” or “exercise” or “take responsibility” and then they will attribute that quote to some ancient guy you’ve probably never heard of, and whom the consumers of their content have definitely never heard of, and then they will act like they are rediscovering the wheel. I do not understand why we put so much more value on something just because some old guy said it. Believe it or not, but most of the guys living in 400 BCE had some pretty questionable things to say about women, for example—just because they said it does not mean I am going to agree with it, and neither should you. 

Accounts like “Carnivorous Aurelius” (a weirdly anti-vegetable version of a Stoic Roman emperor) on Twitter will post some basic quote about knowing yourself, and then follow it up with a post about how breast implants are evil, and then follow that up with a position about religion or women that you could’ve sworn was written 2,000 years ago but actually just comes from this guy’s own brain. These creeps are attempting to put the alpha back in alpha male by justifying their insane beliefs with quotes from an Athenian guy who had about as much insight on some issues as some elementary schoolers, but who just happened to beat them to the punch.

So let’s extract the good and discard the bad. Pyrrho’s extreme version of skepticism is bad, but there is something to be said about not trusting everything you read or hear. And stoicism leads us to avoid pleasure which seems a bit strange, but its disregard for reputation seems prudent as well. Stop appealing to authority or tradition and stop trusting the people that do that. Even if you are a historian or a classicist like me, try to remember that historical people are just people too. 

Common sense does not become more sensible when it is less common: The first guy to figure something out is no more correct than the next billion that come to the same conclusion independently. Let’s try to leave the outdated stuff in the past and work toward a better future, even if some Greek guy theoretically says we shouldn’t.