A Trio of Myths and Misconceptions
- EPOCH
- Apr 1
- 9 min read
The EPOCH Editorial Team
Happy April Fool’s Day!
It has been said that historians, through a lifetime of rigorous research and passion for their field of interest, can ruin what is otherwise a ‘good story’. History is littered with such myths and legends that have been anecdotally passed down for generations as ‘fact’, only for further research to reveal their true origins. So, whilst everyone has read it somewhere or been told otherwise, sadly, Vomitoria were not rooms for sick Romans, the popular British nursery rhyme, ‘Ring a Ring o' Roses’ probably is not about plague victims and Napoleon Bonaparte was not actually that short.
The origins of April Fool’s Day are similarly tossed between competing theorists, nobody can speak with absolute authority on when and why it became customary to play pranks and jokes on one another during the first day of April. All that is known for definite is that the custom has existed for centuries and today many nations and cultures have their own takes on the event. In Britain, the ‘day’ only lasts until noon, after which anyone who tries to trick someone becomes the ‘fool’ themselves, Ukranians tie the event in with the humour festival of ‘Humorina’, whilst several Western European nations refer to the day as ‘April Fish’ whereby participants try to attach paper fishes to others to mark them as the fool. Regardless, the Editorial Team at EPOCH thought it would be a great occasion to share some of their favourite historical myths, tricks, lies and misconceptions in the spirit of the day. So, read on to discover the reality of colourful ancient sculptures, pints of Guinness and county borders.
The Gaudy Realities of Antiquity
Aimée Wilkinson
When picturing life in ancient Greece and Rome, many imagine a romantic world decorated with classically tasteful white marble statues. Well, I am sorry to burst that bubble, but these marble statues that we look to as the height of class and elegance from Antiquity were quite gaudy and garish in reality. That may be a bit harsh, but it is hard not to be taken aback when first seeing these sculptures in their original colourful form. Should it come as a surprise that these statues were once colourful and bright when remaining mosaics also show the gods in colour and not as lifeless, rigid, and restricted? When exploring the Graeco-Roman rooms of museums and art galleries, you are faced with a collection of monotone sculptures of gods and heroes. However, these are often interspersed with far more colourful mosaics depicting the same deities and legends. Have you ever wondered why these figures are depicted as frozen and monotone in sculpture but colourful and lively in mosaics? Though age, handling, and weathering contributed to our impression of Graeco-Roman sculpture as plain white marble, our understanding of these sculptures and their colour was greatly influenced by Renaissance artists, collectors, and curators who scrubbed clean the patchy remains of a colourful past.
German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann was inspecting Greek marble fragments in the 1980s; looking to discover more about the tools and techniques used for the sculptures, he created a lamp to help him better analyse the surface. Through this innovation, he discovered traces of polychromy. Polychromy is a term used by archaeologists and historians to simply indicate the traces of colour in Graeco-Roman sculpture. Following this discovery, Brinkmann became obsessed with a quest for colour in Antiquity, joining with art historian and archaeologist Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann (also his wife) in using technology to approximate the original colours of classical statues. Their research resulted in the exhibition ‘Gods in Color’, which travelled around the globe from 2003 and can now be seen in Frankfurt’s Liebieghaus Skulpturen Sammlung sculpture museum and online.
Response to this exhibition and others like it have been varied, with some embracing this new knowledge and insight into life in Antiquity and others rejecting the notion as it rejects our understanding of Graeco-Roman art, life and religion as established during the Renaissance. However, the colour of these statues is not just seen in modern research and exhibitions but also in ancient literary sources. Pliny the Elder explored the use of colour in the Roman world in The Natural History, specifically discussing paint and colour in Book XXXV. Likewise, in Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture, he discussed the making and use of different colours in Book V and X. Euripides’ Helen also referenced paint being used in statues and portraits when Helen reflects on her life and the influence of her beauty, wishing she could be ‘wiped clean like a statue’ and painted again differently. Therefore, this hidden colour has always been present, either in literature or fragments, so why do we ignore it?
Further Reading
Vinzenz Brinkmann and others, Gods in Colour: Polychromy in the Ancient World (London: Prestel Publishing, 2017).
Margaret Talbot, ‘The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture’, The New Yorker, 22 October 2018 <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture> [accessed 19 March 2025].
The Liebieghaus Skulpturen Sammlung museum page for the Gods in Color exhibition can be viewed here: https://buntegoetter.liebieghaus.de/en/ [accessed 19 March 2025].
Is Guinness Good for You?
Alex Pomeroy
When Arthur Guinness founded St. James’ Gate Brewery, Dublin, in 1759, he probably did not imagine his company would have such a lasting cultural impact. Indeed, a pint of Guinness is now as closely associated with Ireland as a shamrock. The beer which spring to mind when one thinks of ‘Guinness’ was first brewed several decades later, with the term ‘stout’ first appearing in the 1840s to describe Guinness’ dark beers made with malted and roasted barley. Despite its continued favour over the years, Guinness has recently enjoyed something of relative a boom in popularity amongst younger generations. So much so, that over Christmas 2024 soaring demand led to a genuine fear within the UK hospitality sector that Guinness supplies would run totally dry. Thankfully (particularly for this author) these fears were misplaced, and pints of the famous stout continued to be enjoyed worldwide. Part of Guinness’ continued success is down to their eye-catching marketing campaigns and memorable slogans.
Perhaps their most famous slogan is ‘Guinness is Good for You’. Market research in the 1920s found that people claimed to feel better after a pint of Guinness, and many doctors recommended it to pregnant women or patients recovering from operations as it was believed to be rich in iron. The slogan appeared in the first wave of Guinness advertising alongside the talismanic Guinness toucan and has been accredited to the English novelist and playwright, Dorothy L. Sayers, who coined a short poem to accompany the toucan mascot:
'If he can say as you can
“Guinness is good for you”,
How grand to be a toucan —
Just think what Toucan do!'
Guinness’ supposed iron content was utilised in other marketing campaigns which declared ‘Guinness – For Strength!’ and depicted workers carrying comically large steel beams or pulling a horse and cart. Sadly, although it does have antioxidant qualities, no study has been able to confirm any lasting health benefits of Guinness consumption and tour guides at St. James’ Gate stress to visitors that Guinness may not actually be good for them.
However, perception can often be as important as reality, and the popularity of Guinness became essential as neutral Ireland faced chronic shortages during the Second World War. The British government, looking to push Ireland into belligerency, cut vital shipments of fertiliser, feeding stuffs and fuel which caused fears of famine within the fledgling state. The shortages invariably affected wheat production, and by March 1942 the situation was so dire that the Irish government imposed restrictions on malting barley and banned the export of beer to ensure wheat instead went towards bread making instead. The beer ban was keenly noted within the British military over the border in Northern Ireland, whose troops enjoyed the morale-boosting qualities of Guinness, and complaints quickly reached the British government. A trade agreement soon saw British wheat exchanged for Guinness, but Guinness then struggled to source sufficient coal to maintain production and the export ban was reinforced. Further bartering led to the supply of coal to Ireland for Guinness shipments, and for the remainder of the war vital goods were exchanged with British and American officials to ensure Ireland’s survival and that the thirsts of Allied troops were quenched. So, whilst the famous old slogan is sadly more myth than fact, Guinness’ popularity was certainly good for Ireland during the hard years of neutrality.
Further Reading
Bryce Evans, ‘A Pint of Plain is Your Only Man’: How Guinness Saved Ireland During The Emergency’, History Ireland, 22.5 (2014), pp.36-8
Edward J. Bourke, The Guinness Story: The Family, the Business, the Black Stuff (O’Brien Press, 2016)
Inventing Greater Manchester
Jude Rowley
The first of April is a great day for a good joke, but it is also the anniversary of one of the most significant administrative reforms in modern British history. On this day in 1974, the Local Government Act (1972) came into effect and the map of the country was redrawn overnight. Over half a century later, campaigners for historic county boundaries are still waiting for the government to shout, ‘April Fools!’.
As part of the reforms, which were enacted by Ted Heath's Conservative government but came into force under Harold Wilson’s Labour, county boundaries in the North West were drastically changed. The time-honoured county of Lancashire, which historically covered the area between the river Mersey and the Furness peninsula, was compressed into a much smaller administrative area. Lancashire’s biggest cities, Manchester and Liverpool, were split from the county and became the centre of the new administrative areas of Greater Manchester and Merseyside respectively.
It is widely believed that historic Lancashire ceased to exist in the process, replaced instead by the new ‘counties’. This belief quickly spread after 1974, given weight by the dissolution of historic local authorities, the restructuring of local judicial structures, and the reinvention of age-old traditions to incorporate the new administrative areas. For instance, the Duke of Lancaster (currently Charles III) now appoints Lord Lieutenants for Greater Manchester and Merseyside to match the centuries-old ceremonial post of Lancashire’s Lord Lieutenant.
However, the Local Government Act did not abolish traditional county boundaries, and this is instead a common misconception or an historical myth. Instead, it simply created new administrative boundaries on top of the historic borders. These historic county boundaries remained unchanged, as did those of the associated postal counties, meaning that it remained mandatory until 1996 to address letters to ‘Manchester, Lancashire’.
The centuries-old borders of the County Palatine did not change with the creation of new administrative units, but there remains confusion about the relationship between administrative and historic county boundaries. Perhaps this confusion might have been avoided if regional planners had stuck to ‘South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire’, the working name for the conurbation used throughout the 1960s for transport planning and abbreviated to the decidely less catchy ‘SELNEC’.
Though Lancashire on its pre-1974 boundaries continued to exist after the changes, communities were split in two, particularly in the border regions between new administrative areas. Former urban districts were divided between new council areas, meaning neighbours now shared different local authorities, education boards, and public services. There were also political implications, with the old County Council and areas like Lancaster and Bolton that had historically been governed by Labour local authorities before the changes becoming Conservative-controlled after the first elections under the new boundaries.
The separation of a central Lancashire authority was partly justified on the basis that the planned ‘new town’ encircling Preston would increase the population of the area after the 1970s. The new town never came, and by 2021 only 1.2 million people lived within Lancashire’s administrative boundaries, compared to 5.1 million in 1971. The county thus remains something of a shadow of its former self, with an eroded political and cultural identity to match. Though campaigns such as the Friends of Real Lancashire continue to call for historic county boundaries to be recognised and reemphasised, younger generations in Merseyside and Greater Manchester are perhaps increasingly detached from old county identities. With another local government reorganisation for Lancashire in the works, there is no time like the present to take stock of the contested histories of things as seemingly arbitrary as local authority boundaries and their implications for real life communities.
Further Reading
J.D. Marshall, Lancashire (David and Charles, 1974)
J.D. Marshall and Marion E. McClintock, The History of Lancashire County Council, 1889 to 1974 (Martin Robertson, 1977)
Paul Salveson, Lancastrians: Mills, Mines, and Minarets (Hurst, 2023)