Spijkers op laag water
In 2009, I published a little book (in Dutch) in which I discuss more than fifty common errors about ancient history, Spijkers op laag water. Below are some examples, a couple of which are absent from the book. The book ends with a postscript, in which I explain why the classics “attract” so many errors. I think this is the most important part of the book – read it.
- The cradles of religion and rationalism;
- The ancients believed that the Ark rested on a mountain named Ararat;
- The alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians;
- Those mysterious Etruscans;
- There were “hanging gardens” in Babylon;
- The Persians conquered Lydia in 547;
- Ancient sculpture was white;
- The Capitoline Wolf is an early Roman piece of art;
- Pythagoras’ Theorem;
- It’s 42 kilometer from Marathon to Athens;
- The Persian Wars and the Origins of Western Civilization;
- Herodotus visited Babylon;
- Aspasia was a prostitute;
- Pericles had prepared Athens for the Peloponnesian War;
- The Sicilian Expedition caused the Fall of Athens;
- Roman Chronology;
- Alexander destroyed Persepolis;
- Archimedes built a heat ray;
- Caesar defeated the Nervians on the banks of the Sambre;
- Caesar was defeated at Tongeren;
- Caesar’s last words were “Tu quoque, Brute?”
- Octavian called himself Octavian;
- Cleopatra was killed by a viper;
- Teutoburg Forest;
- The Eye of the Needle;
- Roman legionaries;
- Via Belgica;
- Pilate was procurator;
- IIII or IV?;
- Vespasian’s last words were that he feared becoming a god;
- The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan;
- The Ninth Legion Hispana was destroyed in Scotland;
- In the Colosseum, Christians were killed;
- The conversion of Constantine;
- Christians destroyed the Gnostic Gospels;
- The Frisians lived in Friesland;
- The barbarians crossed a frozen Rhine;
- The Menorah is in the Vatican;
- Lead Poisoning caused the Fall of the Roman Empire;
- The ancients believed the earth was flat.
And some common methodological errors:
If you represent a publishing house and think that this book might be translated, you can contact me here.
Subscribe to feed
New at LacusCurtius & Livius 
Here is the reference to an earlier reply that you apparently erased in which I mentioned the experimental/scientific evidence
The experimental proof is at the MIT (sic!) website
https://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_Mythbusters.html
See alsohttps://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/10/president-obama-challenges-mythbusters-crew-to-test-archimedes-legend.html
i know some of those things to be errors ,but all of them´.. it would be interesting reading indeed. most of the worlds beliefs are just .if not all.