Common Errors

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. I have presented my subject matter in a sequence that allows the reader to read the book as a narrative history of Antiquity too, albeit a narrative history with some unusual digressions.

1. The ancients believed that the Ark rested on a mountain named Ararat;
2. The alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians;
3. Those mysterious Etruscans;
4. There were “hanging gardens” in Babylon;
5. The Persians conquered Lydia in 547;
6. Ancient sculpture was white;
7. The Capitoline Wolf is an early Roman piece of art;
8. It’s 42 kilometer from Marathon to Athens;
9. Herodotus visited Babylon;
10. Aspasia was a prostitute;
11. Pericles had prepared Athens for the Peloponnesian War;
12. The Sicilian Expedition caused the Fall of Athens;
13. Alexander destroyed Persepolis;
14. Archimedes built a heat ray;
15. Caesar defeated the Nervians on the banks of the Sambre;
16. Octavian called himself Octavian;
17. Pilate was procurator;
18. IIII or IV?;
19. Vespasian’s last words were that he feared becoming a god;
20. The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan;
21. The Ninth Legion Hispana was destroyed in Scotland;
22. Christians destroyed the Gnostic Gospels;
23. The Frisians lived in Friesland;
24. The barbarians crossed a frozen Rhine;
25. The ancients believed the earth was flat.

The book ends with a postscript, in which I explain why the classics “attract” so many errors. A translation can be found here.

If you represent a publishing house and think that this book might be translated, you can contact me here.