like none at all. the average person is a pleb posting on /pol/ or /int/ getting basic facts about his own and his enemy's country wrong all the time without ever being corrected by someone who knows something.

>>968119

Well I mean did a Greek know that civilizations existed before them?

>>968136

Hesiod talked about how there were ages before the current age where men were more powerful and lived longer. They also would have known about Troy since the Odyssey was very popular.

>>968136
the avarage greek citizen wasnt Plato

>>968136

The myths gave the average citizen a sense of continuity like Theseus being a king of Athens, the Trojan War and many other hero cults here and there.

Until the enlightenment there would be neither the books or education available for the common person to know anything but local oral history and religious memes.

>>968108

I seem to remember reading from Huizinga's book, that the nobility of the high/late middle ages was very well educated.

Your average noble would have been most likely at least bilingual, with obviously religious but also secular learning. So obviously they did have an appreciation for the classical pre-christian world.

Nobles like Phillip the Bold of Burgundy, grew up reading the Iliad, and modeled their behavior according to those heroes in Homer. Plus, things like the Song of Roland would have given some historical context about periods such as that of Charlemagne.

Overall the idea that the Middle-Ages was an "age of historical ignorance", is completely misleading, they were in fact one of the most well recorded pre-modern periods, there were hundreds of Annals written by monks, educators and bureaucratic officials.

>>968108
the average person would know the same as the average person today - nothing.

Scholars, however, could be well versed in history. If they didn't know history, we wouldn't have records today.

I'm pretty sure that the middle ages scholars were more educated than the contemporary scholars

today there just isn't enough motivation to read shit as a scholar

>>968108
>Throughout the ages, how much history would an average person know? Or even the "scholars"?

Very little, I think. Within a few generations, the past tended to devolve to mythology.

Even when "professional" historians arose, half of what many wrote we now know to be the equivalent of gossip rags about scandals, written to smear earlier prominent figures.

>>968144
Didn't Greeks believe there was some sort of 'age of heroes' before their time where everyone was pretty much just stronger, smarter, and overall better?