Ancient Greece

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

In the Greek Peloponnese, high atop the summit on Arcadia’s Mount Lykaion (Wolf Mountain) lies an altar at one of the oldest and most revered

In the most highly anticipated religious festival of the year, women came from far and wide to gather in their cities to celebrate the Thesmophoria,

In Euripides’ Medea (431 BCE), Medea’s wrath against Jason’s betrayal was so fierce that the phrase “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” might