By Owain Williams While the many archaeological sites of Rome are a marvel to visit, it can be difficult to imagine Rome in its heyday when you’re there. Besides a few more well-preserved buildings, such as the Colosseum or the various triumphal arches, most of the remains – a pillar here, an inscription there, a low wall in the distance – offer the barest hint of what the buildings looked like, let alone what the streets of Rome would have looked like when filled with Romans. Philip Matyszak’s A Walk Through Ancient Rome offers readers a companion for a typical walking tour of t ..read more

In this episode we talk to Andrew Michael Chugg about the Pharos Lighthouse, its construction, and the many theories around the light of the lighthouse. You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple, and Amazon ..read more

By Lauren van Zoonen When thinking of the Roman Empire, the little country by the North Sea known as the Netherlands may not come to mind, let alone its southernmost province known as Limburg. In the Roman period, however, Limburg was a thriving part of the empire, grown wealthy through its grain production that was in great demand in the wider area, ultimately leading to the highest concentration of villas in the Netherlands. The travelling exhibition 'Roman Villas in Limburg', currently on view at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (hereafter: RMO), brings these villas, and the people who lived ..read more

By Owain Williams For lovers of ancient history, holidays can often revolve around travelling to places with a wealth of history and a plethora of archaeological sites to explore (I know I tend to). The obvious candidates for holiday locations are Greece and Italy. Both countries have no shortage of places to explore. However, there are so many other places that have just as fascinating sites and histories as Greece and Italy. One such place is Croatia, on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea.  An aerial view of Diocletian's Palace in Split The most obvious location for any ancient h ..read more

By Owain Williams Earlier this month, we released the fifth episode of the Ancient History Podcast! This has been something that I have been thinking about since I first joined Karwansaray Publishers back in 2022, so this is quite a milestone for me.  So far we have had: Phoenicians Among Others with Denise Demetriou Archaeogaming with Briana Jackson Pax Augusta with Roger Gassman A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women with Emma Southon The New Roman Empire with Anthony Kaldellis I thought I would take this opportunity to ask you, the listeners, what you think of the podcast. Wha ..read more

By Lauren van Zoonen Around 600 BC, some inhabitants of the Greek colony of Sybaris (on Greek colonization, see AH 38), located on the Gulf of Taranto in modern Calabria, left their city and settled in Campania where they founded the city of Poseidonia. Some 200 years later, the city switched hands and was controlled by the Lucanians, and later still, it underwent a metamorphosis with the Romanization of the city which was then given the Latin name ‘Paestum’. Throughout the history of Paestum, one thing remained constant, namely the veneration of goddesses; a common thread of the ..read more

In this episode we talk to Anthony Kaldellis about his new book The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium, Byzantium's continuity with the Roman world, and the ins and outs of writing narrative history. You can also listen to the first episode on Spotify, Apple, and Amazon ..read more

By Owain Williams The ‘typical’ areas of ancient history that readers are most familiar with, based on general trends in popular history publishing and on our own reader survey, are likely to be the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1600–1150 BC), Classical and Hellenistic Greece (ca. 500–30 BC), and the Roman imperial period (ca. 30 BC – AD 500), with each period having a particular emphasis on Greco-Roman cultures, whether that be the Mycenaeans or the Roman Republic. The 600 years between the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greco-Persian wars – the Early Iron Age – are rarely ..read more

By Owain Williams  One thing that I really love about reading history – not just ancient history – is delving into the intimate details about daily life, whether that be the jobs of the non-elites, such as sausage sellers and wood collectors, or clothing, and food. One such object that has taken my interest recently is the ancient Greek grater. It is surprising how much literature there is devoted to this one object type. However, this seemingly every day object is, in fact, connected to wider discussions of trade and interconnectivity in the Early Iron Age. Bronze graters are a commo ..read more

By Owain Williams As it is Women's History Month in some parts of the world, I thought I would review a recent book that examines the place of women in ancient Greek literature: Emily Hauser's How Women Became Poets: A Gender History of Greek Literature. Sappho, “the most famous woman poet of ancient Greece… had no words with which to talk about who she was, and what she did” (p. 1). This idea forms the basis of Hauser’s study of ancient Greek literature, from Archaic Greece to the Hellenistic period. According to Hauser, much like how there are gendered expectations surrounding occupation ..read more