In Search of Cleopatra: The Early Years
Before apocryphally rolling out of the carpet and into legend, Cleopatra (69 BCE-30 BCE) already had a storied past. The twenty-one-year old and her thirteen-year …
Theodora The Great: From Mistress to Monarch
One of the most influential and powerful empresses of late antiquity, Theodora’s (c 497-548) life reads like a melodrama where she plays many roles: actress, …
In Search of Asherah: The Lost Hebrew Goddess
Situated on the Mediterranean in today’s northern Syria, Ugarit, a second millennium Canaanite port city, was the site of a major excavation in 1928 that …
The Passion of Dido
Commissioned by none other than Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus after his decisive victory at Actium over Antony and Cleopatra, Virgil’s Aeneid is a patrilineal tale …
The Emperor’s Daughter
All of Rome was in an uproar. No one had imagined that even a cold fish like Augustus was capable of exiling his only biological …
Hypatia: The Last Academic
They came to her by land. They came to her by sea. They came to her from the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire and …
Cleopatra: The Goddess
Before she was a queen, she was a goddess. Born to the purple and weaned on pageantry, Cleopatra (69 BCE-30 BCE) was addressed as Thea …
The Crimes of Agrippina the Younger
Agrippina, Julian-Claudian Empress The ancient chroniclers would have us believe that Julia Agrippina the Minor better known as Agrippina the Younger (16 CE-59 CE) was …
A Pomegranate for Persephone
It is assumed with some authority that Western women living in the twenty-first century have more options in their reproductive lives than at any time …
Pithecusae: Island of Firsts
Home to thermal springs and verdant landscapes, the idyllic island of Ischia also houses the first Greek settlement in all of Europe. Enterprising pioneers from …