ancient Greece

Parthenon Marbles' Fate Subject to Secret Talks

The British Museum and Greek government officials have acknowledged secret talks over the last two years about the repatriation of marbles taken by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon in the early 1800s. The resolution is not yet known. 

All History is Revisionist

by James M. Banner Jr.

"The collective noun for a group of historians is an “argumentation,” and for good reason. At the very dawn of historical inquiry in the West, historians were already wrestling over the past, attacking each other."

What Americans Might Learn About Political Collapse from the Classical Greeks and Romans

by Daniel Noah Moses

The right traces political turmoil in the US to the supposed abandonment of the classical canon. But reading those works might not teach the lessons they want about hierarchy, authority, and political collapse. 

Mapping Black Antiquity

by Sarah Derbew

Ancient Greek literature is full of depictions of African people that affirm their participation in classical antiquity. Why have these been submerged? 

The Legacy of Same-Sex Love in Ancient Thebes

by James Romm

The story of the Sacred Band of Thebes – a fighting force of pairs of male lovers – was discovered in time to provide inspiration to gay rights struggles from the Victorian era to the present. James Romm's new book tells the story. 

2,500 Years Ago, the Philosopher Anaxagoras Brought Science’s Spirit to Athens

2,500 years ago, Anaxagoras brought the Ionian philosophical outlook to Athens, where he helped to advance a naturalistic and empirical understanding of natural phenomena. 

The Battle of Salamis Opened the Door for Ancient Greece’s Golden Age

by Fred Zilian

September marked the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Salamis, where the Greeks won a surprising naval victory over Persian forces, thwarted their efforts to conquer Greece, and set the stage for the golden age of Athenian civilization. 

Erasing History? Um, History is Full of Torn-Down Monuments

According to historian Sarah Bond, the practice goes all the way back to the ancient world.

The Plague That Killed Athenian Democracy

by Robert Zaretsky

Want to know how disease can permanently alter a society? Read Thucydides.

Plagues Follow Bad Leadership in Ancient Greek Tales

by Joel Christensen

Zeus observes in Homer’s “Odyssey,” as I’ve translated it, “Humans are always blaming the gods for their suffering / but they experience pain beyond their fate because of their own recklessness.”

The Donald Trump of Ancient Greece

by David Stuttard

His name? Alcibiades. Like Trump, this scion of wealth loved to win and manipulate the masses.

Modern Love in Ancient Greece

by Jonathan Zimmerman

The Evolution of Sexuality

Fisherman nets centuries-old statue of Greek god Apollo in Gaza Strip

The statue is at least 2,000 years old.

Turns out the ancient Greeks were quite the grill masters

The Mycenaeans knew how to throw a pretty mean barbeque.

After 2,000 years, Ptolemy’s war elephants are revealed

War elephants didn't begin with Hannibal.

Were China's Terracotta Warriors inspired by ancient Greek art?

A new study from the School of Oriental and African Studies says yes.

How world's most difficult puzzle was solved

It was one of the most captivating mysteries of the modern age, requiring three detectives and 52 years to solve. Along the way, there was magnificent obsession, bitter disappointment, world-shaking triumph and swift, unexplained death.At the centre of the mystery lay a set of clay tablets from the ancient Aegean, inscribed more than 3,000 years ago and discovered at the dawn of the 20th century amid the ruins of a lavish Bronze Age palace.Written by royal scribes, the tablets teemed with writing like none ever seen: tiny pictograms in the shapes of swords, horses’ heads, pots and pans, plus a set of far more cryptic characters whose meaning is still debated today....

Martin Bernal, ‘Black Athena’ Scholar, Dies at 76

Martin Bernal, whose three-volume work “Black Athena” ignited an academic debate by arguing that the African and Semitic lineage of Western civilization had been scrubbed from the record of ancient Greece by 18th- and 19th-century historians steeped in the racism of their times, died on June 9 in Cambridge, England. He was 76.The cause was complications of myelofibrosis, a bone marrow disorder, said his wife, Leslie Miller-Bernal.“Black Athena” opened a new front in the warfare over cultural diversity already raging on American campuses in the 1980s and ’90s. The first volume, published in 1987 — the same year as “The Closing of the American Mind,” Allan Bloom’s attack on efforts to diversify the academic canon — made Mr. Bernal a hero among Afrocentrists, a pariah among conservative scholars and the star witness at dozens of sometimes raucous academic panel discussions about how to teach the foundational ideas of Western culture....

Greeks to stop Qatari nude cover-up

Nudity is an all or nothing kind of thing, as Qatari authorities recently discovered. Seek to drape the naughty bits of a pair of ancient sculptures of nude male athletes, and you end up with no nudes at all.This is precisely what happened at Alriwaq Doha exhibition space. Having loaned the gallery the two sculptures for its Olympics Past and Present exhibition, Athens preferred to see them returned than exhibited with their modesty veiled.The Qatari anxiety about displaying the naked body has a different root — but is no more or less valid — than that which saw thousands of statues suffer the chop across the history of the Western world....

Lost city of Heracleion gives up its secrets

A lost ancient Egyptian city submerged beneath the sea 1,200 years ago is starting to reveal what life was like in the legendary port of Thonis-Heracleion.For centuries it was thought to be a legend, a city of extraordinary wealth mentioned in Homer, visited by Helen of Troy and Paris, her lover, but apparently buried under the sea.In fact, Heracleion was true, and a decade after divers began uncovering its treasures, archaeologists have produced a picture of what life was like in the city in the era of the pharaohs.The city, also called Thonis, disappeared beneath the Mediterranean around 1,200 years ago and was found during a survey of the Egyptian shore at the beginning of the last decade....