Ancient Greece

For thousands of years, women everywhere have had Penelope to thank for playing the indelible role of a loyal and stalwart wife to Odysseus, her devious, vengeful and violent-prone husband. Displaying a keen intelligence and an unwavering constancy for endless hard years, Penelope is often depicted in the epic as weeping and wailing while she confines herself to the bedroom during critical moments—apropos of any intelligent and strong woman.

  At first glance, it would seem that Medusa, the mortal Gorgon with writhing snakes for hair, wide glaring eyes, and a protruding tongue, is

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.

  It is no wonder that Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) was often mistaken for a god; he modeled his life on nothing less.

  Of all the unhappy couples in Greek literature perhaps the unhappiest is that of the Olympian first couple themselves. As the goddess of marriage,

Located south of Naples on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, some twenty miles south of the Amalfi Coast stands the ancient Greek city of

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.

Often recognized as the “Age of Heroes,” the Mycenaean civilization (1600 BCE-1100 BCE) was eternalized in the Homeric epics with indelible characters such as the