Agrippina the Elder: The Woman Who Would Be Empress
Long before her boat docked at the port of Brundisium in the winter of 19 CE, Agrippina (the Elder—14 BCE- 33 CE) might have known
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In Defense of Medea
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
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Saint Theodora
When we consider the pious lives of saints, images of self-sacrificing martyrs come to mind, devout adherents passionately immolating themselves for a higher cause. So
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,
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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
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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
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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
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