The Madness of Messalina
At the legendary nuptials, the aroma of exotic spices and the sound of raucous laughter filled the air as guests were feted on savory […]
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The Slaveholding City-State Of Sparta’s Liberated Women
On the face of it, Spartans might have felt right at home living under the iron fist of the Third Reich given that this city-state—more
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The Curse of Cassandra
With a name that defines incredulity itself, it is no wonder that Cassandra—the cursed Trojan prophetess—has a hard time being taken seriously. Scorned throughout the ages, Cassandra was infamously disregarded and frequently reviled by her countrymen. Even her own mother ridiculed her.
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Analyzing Antigone
The playwright Sophocles (497 – 405 BCE) might have been amused to find that nearly twenty-five hundred years after writing about his eponymous heroine, the
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Advance of the Amazons
It was love at first sight when Achilles locked eyes with the famed Amazon warrior queen, Penthesilea. Romance, however, was the last thing on his
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Cleopatra Selene: A Dynasty’s Last Breath
The streets of Rome were drunk and riotous with delight in the summer of 29 BCE on the final, most opulent day of Octavian’s three-day-long
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The Bronze Age Queen—Helen of Sparta
Celebrated as the most beautiful woman in the world, the allure of Helen of Troy née Sparta was the yardstick for which all women were
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Hera: Suppression of the Native Queen
Of all the unhappy couples in Greek literature perhaps the unhappiest is that of the Olympian first couple themselves. As the goddess of marriage,
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Fulvia: The “Fourth” Triumvir
History has long been unkind to Fulvia (85/80 BCE-40 BCE)—the notoriously jilted wife whom Mark Antony abandoned for the Queen of the Nile. The
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“The First War Between Women”: Olympias and Adea Eurydice
The earth turned on its axis the day Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) died. Notorious for his unrestrained aggressivity and hard drinking, it should have come as no surprise to the Greeks that Alexander the Great would not live to see old age. Yet when the warrior king died at the age of thirty-two, it left a power vacuum the likes of which the ancient world had never seen, resulting in widespread unrest and turmoil throughout Alexander’s vast empire.
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