Onomasticon of Classical Pseudonyms and Avatars
(Last update: May 27th, 2020: New Addition: “The Noticer” (Avatar))
This page contains a list of names and images taken from Greco-Roman antiquity that are used by those who espouse hateful politics. We announced this project on November 30th, 2018 and will add to it periodically: if you only want to see new additions these are available under the site tag “Pseudonyms and Avatars.”
The Onomasticon primarily includes those who produce their own content, but we have listed some who comment on articles on hate sites using classically-inspired pseudonyms and images at the bottom of this page.
We have linked below to archived versions of hate sites in order to avoid generating traffic to those sites.
Atlas is the author of an article on the misogynist site Return of Kings called “The Roots of Masculinity in Ancient Rome.” It complained that “there are very few institutions left that teach the traditional manly character that built all of Western Civilization” and praised an incomplete and self-serving version of Roman masculinity as a model we should adopt. The ancient Atlas was a figure in Greek mythology who was forced to hold up the sky as a punishment for his role in the primordial war between the gods. The Return of Kings contributor may see himself as “holding up” traditional values in a similar way or he may simply be attracted to Atlas as a symbol of eternal strength. It is nevertheless an ironic choice of name since his complaints about the decline of masculinity echo those made by Romans themselves who were on the losing side of a political struggle: just as Atlas and the other Titans lost power with the ascendancy of Jupiter, the misogynists represented by sites like Return of Kings are losing power as our society creeps toward gender equity. Their complaints about the decline of “masculinity” sound just like those of Roman elites who were losing political power as the oligarchic Republic collapsed. Now, as then, it’s not about protecting a supposedly valuable “traditional manly character”, it’s about keeping power.
Boethius is a contributor to StoicSchool.org, a racist, neo-stoic site that Pharos has documented. In one of his articles he writes that “Modern Western feminism is a calculated effort to destroy Western civilization” and argues that men trained in “Virtue” will be able to resist feminists who exercise their “power over men” to “degrade men’s psyches.” The ancient Boethius was a Roman senator and philosopher of the 6th century CE. Boethius was imprisoned and executed on charges of conspiracy against the emperor; this author may be attracted to this name because he believes his worldview is similarly persecuted. It is a strange choice for a misogynist, however, since Boethius’ most famous work, the Consolation of Philosophy, describes how Philosophy itself, in the form of a woman “whose eyes shone as with fire and in power of insight surpassed the eyes of men,” visited Boethius in prison and instructed him in how to endure his misfortune.
Carnifex was the name on social media of Scott Paul Beierle, who killed Maura Binkley and Nancy Van Vessem and wounded five others before killing himself in a yoga studio in Tallahassee, FL in November 2018. “Carnifex” is the Latin word for “executioner.” Beierle had made a series of misogynist, racist, and xenophobic videos that he posted online under the name “Scott Carnifex.” In one of these he called mass murderer Elliot Rodger a “hero.” His choice of pseudonym seems based on a vision of ancient Rome as a place of violence and patriarchy.
Cato the Elder is a contributor to StoicSchool.org, a racist, neo-stoic site that Pharos has documented. His articles praise European nationalists like Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, paint all Muslims as terrorists, and argue that America is “an experiment on how cultural diversity compares with Plato’s Republic” that “needs some adjustment.” The ancient Cato the Elder is known as a staunch conservative and in particular as a critic of the introduction of non-Roman elements into Roman culture, and is thus an apt choice for this writer. The ancient Cato is also famous for ending all his speeches following the Second Punic War by saying “Carthage must be destroyed,” no matter what the subject of the speech. The StoicSchool.org contributor imitates this as well, ending each article with “ISIS/Sharia/Marxism must be destroyed.”
Domitius Corbulo is a contributor to white supremacist publications and sites including The Occidental Quarterly, The Occidental Observer, and Counter-Currents. He praises Enlightenment thought for its “celebration of white reason and morality,” warns about a “ploy to rob Europeans of their heritage [that] has been in the making for some decades,” and takes Archimedes’ boast that with “a place to stand with a lever [he could] move the whole world” as evidence of the “exceptional” European “ethos of aristocratic individualism” that allowed “the West to diverge from the Rest.” His work has attracted the attention of other white supremacist bloggers, one of whom uses Corbulo’s claim that “Science is now educating us that White nationalists are normal humans beings who happen to exhibit a healthy and ‘positive’ evaluation of their own ethnic group consistent with evolutionary theory” to frame a warning that “Rationally speaking, the two main threats to whites come from Jews (who are smarter and more aggressive) and blacks (who are stronger and more aggressive).” The historical Domitius Corbulo was a Roman general who is represented in ancient sources as a militarily successful and innocent victim of the emperor Nero‘s regime (he was so loyal that he willingly commited suicide when he was commanded to do so). More recent scholarship, however, has argued this flattering account derives from ancient historians’ reliance on Corbulo’s own self-serving memoirs and desire to vilify Nero. Corbulo, therefore, is “in no way to be regarded as the splendidly successful soldier and far-sighted politician, prevented by his opponents from achieving complete success,” as the entry in Brill’s New Pauly encyclopedia puts it.
Hadrian is a contributor to the racist website IdentityDixie (founded by Musonius Rufus, see below). He argues that any southerners who “accepts the modern guilt narratives regarding racism” is a “cuckfederate” and needs to realize, in Hadrian’s words, that “after being conquered, your nation was brutally exploited by … the progressives … first they freed the negroes, then gave them the vote, and then nearly a century later forced Southern children to integrate with them at bayonet point.” Another article describes “Urbanites” as “disabled, mentally retarded, transgendered, multi-racial, angst-ridden teenager[s].” The ancient Hadrian was a Roman emperor of the 2nd century CE. He is often invoked by xenophobes who admire the wall he had built across Britain which, according to some but not all sources, was intended to keep “barbarians” out of Roman territory.
Hippocrates is the name used by the person who briefly revived the race pseudo-science column “The Galton Report”, published by the white supremacist site American Renaissance. His predecessor in this role was Glayde Whitney, a racist professor of behavioral genetics at Florida State University who wrote the forward to David Duke’s autobiography and accepted funding for his research from The Pioneer Fund. Only a few of Hippocrates’ articles for “The Galton Report” have been published online, but they include a review of the early proponent of eugenics Francis Galton‘s “work on race differences in intelligence and temperament” including his notorious claim that “the intelligence of the Greeks of classical Athens was nearly two grades higher than that of the contemporary English” while the Greeks of Galton’s own time had lower IQs “largely as a result of immigration” by which “the high Athenian breed decayed and disappeared.” This fantasy about the racial purity of ancient Greeks has been documented by Pharos at American Renaissance and elsewhere. Hippocrates also wrote an article entitled “What did the Ancient Greeks think of Blacks?,” which cites the same quotation (that appears in no surviving ancient text) of the ancient Greek medical writer Galen that Pharos has documented elsewhere as a “remarkably accurate…first recorded statement of the low intelligence of blacks.” The historical Hippocrates was a Classical Greek physician often referred to as the “Father of Medicine.” The modern writer may simply have chosen this pseudonym in order to associate himself with a famous ancient (and therefore, rightly or wrongly, prestigious) scientist, but Hippocrates in particular is a good choice for a race pseudo-scientist since ancient Hippocratic texts provide some of the earliest articulations of pseudo-scientific racism, which were amplified and made even more pernicious by early modern race “scientists.”
Lysander is the online pseudonym of Nathan Larson, a former congressional candidate from Charlottesville, VA. Larson used this name on sites he founded that “served as gathering places for pedophiles and violence-minded misogynists.” In addition to advocating for the rights of pedophiles and rapists, he has called Hitler a “white supremacist hero.” The ancient Lysander was a Spartan admiral who won the Peloponnesian War. Many on the far right admire Sparta but they usually suppress or ignore the homoerotic elements of its military culture. Larson, by contrast, may have chosen Lysander in order to claim an ancient precedent for his pedophilia: Lysander had a pederastic relationship with the future Spartan king Agesilaus.
Marcus Aurelius is a contributor to the racist, xenophobic, and misogynist site StoicSchool.org that Pharos has documented. In one of his articles he describes six tactics used by “Eastern thinkers” in their “conscious strategy to destroy Western Civilization:” censorship, art, instiutions, nagging, economy, and diversity. In another he criticizes cities that have taken steps to protect immigrants against president Trump’s xenophobic and racist immigration policies. He makes occasional reference to classical history, saying, for example, that “as with Alexander the Great, the government will go to the strongest” in an article arguing that the U.S. vice president should be given greater authority in the “civil war in America.” The ancient Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor and a practitioner of Stoicism. His defense of the boundaries of the Roman Empire and position at the top of the Roman social and political hierarchy make him a hero of many modern Stoics, especially those with regressive politics.
Musonius Rufus is the founder of the site IdentityDixie.com — a site for “Southerners … who dare to resist their own genocide” — and the host of the podcast “Rebel Yell: A Southern Nationalist podcast of the Alt-Right.” Guests on the show have included Jason Kessler, the organizer of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, and Augustus Sol Invictus, whose website and choice of name (it’s not a pseudonym) Pharos has documented. The ancient Musonius Rufus was a Roman Stoic philosopher. The host of Rebel Yell’s choice of name may reflect the popularity of Stoicism among hate groups (also documented by Pharos) but it is nevertheless an odd choice for a white supremacist, since Musonius Rufus wrote treatises with titles arguing “That women also should do philosophy” and “That boys and girls should get the same education.”
The Noticer is an Anti-Semitic Telegram channel that collects screenshots of anti-racist tweets from people who self-identify as Jewish. The avatar for this channel is a bust of the Roman orator Cicero. Read our full documentation here.
Quintilian is a contributor to the neo-Nazi site Counter-Currents.org, which Pharos has documented. He is the author of several series on the site, including “Masterpieces of Aryan Thought” and “Masterpieces of Aryan Literature,” and many articles, including one called “The Future is White,” which argues that “negros and mestizos need whites to survive” but “whites, on the other hand, do not need negros and mestizos,” and that “black lives don’t really matter that much. It is the white race that is the indispensable race.” The ancient Quintilian was a rhetorician and teacher of rhetoric under the Flavian emperors. His treatise The Orator’s Education is a research interest of Pharos director Curtis Dozier. By using this pseudonym the Counter-Currents author may wish to paint himself as a master of persuasive argumentation. [Update: Counter-Currents’ Quintilian admires a racist quote making Latin and Greek a shorthand for discriminatory education]
Sargon of Akkad is the pseudonym of Carl Benjamin, a professional YouTuber whose videos include “It’s Okay to be a Nationalist,” an interview with white nationalist Steve Bannon, and a two hour long biography of the ancient Greek general Pyrrhus of Epirus. His videos “criticize feminism and identity politics,” “Islam, Black Lives Matter, and the overall notion of straight white male privilege,” and the feminist “Recl@im the Internet” movement. He accuses progressives of “racism and advocacy against whites” and on social media has made light of rape. Offline, he has engaged in the harassment of women in the videogame industry. The ancient Sargon of Akkad was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire of the 24th and 23rd centuries BCE.
Seneca III has written more than 100 articles for the Islamaphobic site Gates of Vienna, which Pharos documented for its three-part series claiming that the “Fall” of the Roman Empire is a warning to Europe about the threat of immigration. His articles include a claim that “the Islamic invasion of the west” is a “by-product of…the great globalisation project;” an attack on “political correctness” as a “Marxist-Socialist-Islamofascist mind control strategy;” and a series based on the work of Guillaume Faye, an influential French anti-Semite and nationalist who was described by one of the most prominent white supremacists in the U.S. as “among the very best-known spokesmen for the survival of our [sc. white] people.” This writer has probably chosen the name “Seneca III” to place himself in a lineage with the ancient writers Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Younger. The former wrote about oratory and is, as far as Pharos has found, unknown on hate sites (though his complaints about “how sharply intellectual standards are falling every day” and that “our young men…are lazy, their intellects asleep…competing in bodily softness with women [and] beautifying themselves with filthy fineries” (Contr. 1.pr.6ff.) would seem to make him a natural fit for their hateful views). Seneca the Younger, the Stoic philosopher, is much more frequently cited by racists, anti-Semites, and misogynists, and it is probably the prestige of this ancient author the modern one wants to attach to himself.
Titus Quintus is a contributor to the neo-Nazi site Counter Currents where he has written articles arguing, for example, that corporations’ efforts to promote “racial and sexual equality” (which he calls “race- and sex-based marxism”) do not “add value.” In another article he warns that increasing criticism of Columbus Day is “destroying…the future of Eurocolonial peoples” and likens the decline of the holiday to the removal of racist Confederate monuments. No significant ancient figure has the name “Titus Quintus” but an important Roman family had the name Quinctia and many members had names beginning with Titus Quinctius. If the Counter Currents’ author’s pseudonym is not just an amalgam of Roman-sounding names, he may be thinking of Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the Roman consul who played an important role in the Roman conquest of Greece and the expansion of the Roman empire to the east. White supremacists tend to admire successful generals like this, although Flamininus remains an odd choice because his attack on Sparta brought an end to its military and political power in Greece, and Sparta is the ancient city that people like Counter Curernts’ Titus Quintus admire most.
Verbo Tempestas is the name of a YouTube channel that has featured interviews with white supremacists such as Augustus Sol Invictus (whose choice of name and site Pharos has documented), Carolyn Emerick (editor of the white nationalist magazine Europa Sun who was banned from Twitter for promoting a white ethnostate and calling the holocaust a hoax), as well as episodes with titles such as “Radical Traditionalism and the War Against White Males” (in which a guest comments, about population growth in Africa, “we fucked the planet over when we started taking modern medical technology to these shithole countries“) and “Johnny Rebel’s Coon Town sounds nice enough to visit” (in which the host claims that the racial slur “coon” was originally a neutral term for a black person, ignoring the origin and history of the term). The channel’s name combines a form of the Latin word for “word” with the Latin word for “storm” and looks as though it resulted from putting “word storm” into Google translate. The two words do not appear near each other in extant Latin literature. The title seems intended to make the show appear intellectual and respectable.
Virgil is a long-time contributor to Breitbart, the online news platform known for promoting the work and ideas of prominent white supremacists (some of whose work Pharos has documented). Virgil’s articles include one called “America Has Been Warned: Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, making the argument, familiar to Pharos readers, that “American politicians today…should be reading Gibbon, because America today is under threat, not least from the sort of demographic transformation–some might call it an invasion [of “barbarians”]–that toppled Rome.” Part 2 of this article drew a parallel between Gibbon’s history and a racist novel that has been in the news recently because leaked emails revealed that President Trump’s Senior Advisor Stephen Miller recommended it to other Breitbart reporters, among other white supremacist material. The historical Virgil was one of the most important and influential ancient Latin poets. The Breitbart author may have chosen this name because the Roman Virgil’s Aeneid has often been read as a celebration of the emperor Augustus’ regime (Augustus being a favorite historical model for fascists and white supremacists). This simplistic understanding of the poem, however, has been superceded by interpretations that recognize the poem’s deep ambivalence about the cost of totalitarian rule.
Commenters who use classically-inspired pseudonyms and images
Epaminondas commented on a review that Pharos documented of a homophobic book arguing that “homosexuality” in Ancient Greece is “a myth.” “Epaminondas” endorsed the book, saying that “I have extensively read the Greek classics and came to the same conclusion years ago” and that “[research on homoeroticism in ancient Greek culture] was bogus from the beginning and simply afforded homosexuals an excuse to indulge themselves.” The ancient Epaminondas was a Theban general who defeated Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra. This could be his real name, but real or assumed, it is an ironic one for a homophobic commenter: the Theban victory was in part secured by the “Sacred Band,” an elite unit of male lovers, and according to Plutarch, Epaminondas himself had erotic relationships with two young men.
