Ancient Greece

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 […]

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

  Giving Thanks, the Ancient Greek Way Did the ancient Greeks have an autumnal festival that corresponded to the traditional Thanksgiving holiday? There was, in

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

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

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.

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

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. 

As any self-respecting Greek hero knows, sacking a city and raping its female inhabitants is hard work. So it is no wonder that after Agamemnon

In the Myth of the Minotaur, if not for the ministrations of the humble Princess Ariadne, Theseus—the Greek hero—would not have had a prayer. Although