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 …
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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Giving Thanks, the Ancient Greek Way
The Original Thanksgiving… was only for Women? The sometimes Violent, sometimes Psychedelic Ancient Harvest Festival Dear Classical Wisdom Reader, Today hundreds of millions of Americans …
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 …
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 …
Empress Theodora—Sinner or Saint?
The hooded gaze of an inscrutable Theodora (c.497- 548 CE) greets hundreds of thousands of visitors each year as they pay their respects to her …
The Savagery of Citizen Wives
The dominant paradigm was turned on its head when subjugated women were made autonomous by participating in a feminine fertility festival known as the Thesmophoria. …
The Bible’s Bedeviling Bad Girls: Delilah, Jezebel And Salome
It should come as no surprise to most that the biblical writers were unfair to the gentler sex. After all, ever since Eve bit into …
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Demeter and the Danaids: A Subversive Alliance
It is assumed with some authority that the Greek world’s most venerable feminine fertility festival—exclusive to upstanding citizen wives—had as its unequivocal founders a murderous …
The Mysterious Eleusinian Mysteries
Conjuring up mystical images of secret initiation rites held under cover of darkness, the Eleusinian Mysteries had a reputation as a dark and dangerous festival. …