Ancient

In Wives, Witches, and Whirlpools: The Powerful Women of Homer’s Odyssey, Professor Jessica Blum-Sorensen helps you explore this classic work with fresh eyes, focusing not on the eponymous hero, but on the many women whose voices and motivations invite us to rethink traditional ideas of heroism. Across seven lectures, you’ll reexamine some of the foundational themes of the literary canon from a new perspective and discover why the deities, wives, maidens, witches, and monsters who populate Homer’s Odyssey are more than a match for its hero.

Brought to you by Penguin. AS SEEN ON TV Professor Alice Roberts travels 1,300 miles by train across Italy, France and Spain in search of a greater understanding of the Roman Empire for Channel 4's popular TV series Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts. Visiting sites often off the beaten...

The Stories, Secrets, and Surprising Truths Behind One of History's Greatest EmpiresDid you know that an empire once stretched from Libya to Pakistan — ruled by kings whose royal couriers could cross it faster than anyone thought possible, without ever riding the same horse twice? For centuries, ancient Persia has been remembered through the eyes of its enemies — cast as the villain in Greek and Roman histories. But behind those stories lies one of the most innovative, ambitious, and dramatic civilizations the world has ever known.

Everything you were taught about the dawn of mankind is a lie. Why do ancient monuments across the globe share the same "impossible" technology? What if the gods of our ancestors weren't myths, but visitors who left their fingerprints in our DNA? In Forbidden History, Dominic Haynes pulls back the curtain on a suppressed past that mainstream scholars refuse to acknowledge. From the sunken ruins of lost empires to the precision-cut stones of the Andes, this book connects the dots of a global cover-up.

Among the figures of early Roman history, few stand out quite like Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a man who to his contemporaries stood as the very image of the Roman Vir Bous (the Good Man). His life, whether viewed through the lens of ancient writers or treated as something of a foundational myth, has shaped Western thought surrounding civic duty and the restraint of power for more than 2,000 years.

Mary Beard nos demuestra que los clásicos siguen impotrando ¿Qué tiene de emocionante un trozo de pan de hace 4.000 años? ¿O unas vasijas de pintura abandonadas durante la erupción de Pompeya? ¿Por qué deberíamos interesarnos por un pasado tan remoto? ¿Qué puede decirnos hoy? La vida...

How did a remote desert people change the course of world history? In the seventh century AD, the Eastern Roman Empire collapsed—defeated by the rising power of Arabia. How did this happen? And why then? In this gripping new history, Nick Holmes offers a fresh view of the end of the Ancient...

Often called the “Father of Geometry,” Euclid’s influence is so pervasive that his book, The Elements, was the primary math manual for over 2,000 years. It was not a “textbook” in the modern sense, as it did not have problem sets, word problems, or diagrams for practice, but it was a foundational reference and logical guide that students had to read, memorize, and demonstrate. In the Western and Islamic worlds, Euclid’s Elements was the standard geometry text for almost every educated person until the 19th century.

In The Missing Key, Matthew LaCroix uncovers that code and reconstructs the blueprint it points to—a revelation that challenges conventional timelines and transforms what we think we know about human origins. The culmination of more than a decade of research and two years of field investigation, this work follows the author from the archives of the Penn Museum to the ancient sites of Türkiye, Cambodia, South America, and Egypt, where the final pieces came together on the Giza Plateau.

In this timely book, distinguished historian Thomas Madden explores the people, events, and factors that led to the collapse of some of the world's most enduring republics—from Carthage to Rome to Venice and beyond—and examines the worrying lessons these failures hold for the United States and other democracies today.

In Climbing Parnassus, winner of the 2005 Paideia Prize, Tracy Lee Simmons presents a defense and vindication of the formative power of Greek and Latin. He also shows how these languages have played a crucial role in the development of authentic Humanism, the foundation of the West's cultural...

From the New York Times bestselling author, the incredible true story of the American archaeologists and classicists who went undercover as OSS spies during World War II to fight the Nazis and protect the world's most precious relics In 1942, as head of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan...

Bloomsbury presents Teutoburg Forest AD 9: The destruction of Varus and his legions by Michael McNally, read by Cliff Chapman The story of the famous battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the most complete defeat of the Roman Army in the west, which saw the destruction of three Roman legions by...

Despite the enmity towards Carthage held by the Greeks and Romans, they nevertheless spent centuries romanticizing and mythologizing its legendary founder, Queen Dido. It’s an established fact that the Phoenicians established a maritime empire with Tyre at the forefront in the early 1st millennium BCE, and from that, the ancients believed that a Phoenician princess named Elisa fled Tyre to North Africa after her brother killed her husband, where she managed to negotiate with local leaders for land and secure the site of Carthage, becoming Queen Dido in the process.

Enjoy the Journey