Ancient history
What Ovid in exile was missing
The poet complained bitterly of the barbarism of Tomis, on the Black Sea – but it was actually a thriving entrepot with a rich culture, like many of the Roman empire’s remoter cities
The Assyrians were really not so different from us
Selena Wisnom shows us children toiling over their writing tablets, taking pride in schoolwork, and a heartbroken scribe finding consolation in literature after the death of his king in battle
They weren’t all scheming poisoners: the maligned women of imperial Rome
Joan Smith criticises the distortions of Robert Graves in particular, whose villainisation of the empress Livia had no historical basis whatever
Heroines of antiquity – from Minoan Crete to Boudica’s Britain
Daisy Dunn’s ‘history of antiquity written through women’ includes warrior princesses, scheming matriarchs, poets, priestesses and tragic nymphs
The one and only
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
Ancient stalemate
History is always relevant, says Adrian Goldsworthy – and Rome’s long war with Parthia-Persia, ending in deadlock, should make Putin wary
Sic transit gloria mundi
Katherine Pangonis also traces the histories of Tyre, Antioch, Syracuse and Ravenna, once proud centres of government, trade and culture
From Anaximander to Zeno
Adam Nicolson thinks so. But his liveliest stories are about Pythagoras, who lived in a hole in the ground, and Thales, who fell into a well while studying the night sky
Movers and shakers
Anthony Sattin begins with a quotation from Bruce Chatwin, who famously tried all his life to produce a book about…
Sound made visible
What particularly excites Silvia Ferrara, the author of The Greatest Invention, is not language per se but writing – that…
Face value
Rising professors do well to be controversial if they wish to be invited to contribute to mainstream media. But the…
Bloodbath in Rome
It’s not as if Julius Caesar wasn’t warned about the Ides of March. Somebody thrust a written prediction of the…
How are the mighty fallen
Greg Woolf didn’t know his book would come out during an urban crisis. Thanks to coronavirus, Venice’s population, for example,…
Fair women and brave men
History is full of ‘ifs’ and the Spartan story fuller than most. If the 300 had not made their famous…
City of myth and mystery
The Spartans were not the only Greeks to die at Thermopylae. On the fateful final morning of the battle, when…
Movers and shakers
What have the Akkadians ever done for us? As it turns out, rather a lot, as Philip Matyszak reveals in…
A battleground for archaeologists
Armageddon began as Har Megiddo, the Hill of Megiddo in northern Israel. The theological aspect is Christian. For Jews, ancient…
What the Ancient Greeks did for us
I am undoubtedly, alas, an example of what the Fowler brothers, H.W. and F.G., of The King’s English fame, would…
The ancient Greeks would have loved Alexa
Among the myths of Ancient Greece the Cyclops has become forever famous, the Talos not so much. While both were…
The most shocking sight in ancient Greece: men in trousers
In his robust new biography of Alcibiades, David Stuttard describes how the mercurial Greek general shocked his contemporaries by adopting…
Did the fabled Phoenicians ever actually exist?
So the Phoenicians never existed. Herodotus, that unreliable old fibber, made it all up in the Histories. Is this really…
The real reason for the fall of Rome? Climate change
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? It’s a question that’s been puzzling writers ever since Edward Gibbon wrote The History…
Henry III vs EU law
It is no surprise that the laws imposed on the UK by a European parliament in Brussels should so infuriate…
Corbyn, Nero and the Bomb
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton is worried that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will never use the existing…
The emperors of Brussels
As both sides of the great EU debate line up their forces, it is worth reflecting on the implications of…
