The experience of studying ancient history at any level is to deal with dates as amorphous and ranging. Even where we can assign a year to an event the idea that you can whittle this down to a specific date and, shock horror, an hour makes the hairs on the neck bristle. Yet this option …
The Eclipse in Antiquity. Can we provide dates from these? Read More »
In May I took the day off and journeyed up to the British Museum. I had planned on doing this anyhow, but the Feminine Power exhibition was on and so I thought I’d check it out. Here are some of the artefacts with notes. Female figurines. These formed some of the oldest pieces. From left …
A trip to the Feminine Power exhibition at the British Museum. Read More »
Happy Halloween! I hope you enjoyed the episode, it was a chance to cover a slightly different area from Greece and Rome. I referred to a few scholars in the episode and you can find their work in the reading list/bibliography. To start with thanks to ‘By the Fire’ podcast. You can find the podcast …
It was Aristotle, in his work The History of Animals, who noted that there were two types of camels. The Bactrian, who had two humps, and the dromedary who was afforded a single hump[1]. Though he may not have been the first to make this classification (as I will come to) he did allot the …
With the recent festivities in mind the angst over gift giving could be thought of as a modern concept. However, gifts were given in antiquity and if you’ve listened to my recent podcast on the Saturnalia you will have heard of the lengths which some went to. Martial, a 1st century CE poet wrote about …
