Ancient history

• Protogenes, the famous ancient painter who refused to stop working in the midst of the siege of Rhodes

  Among the many painters who worked in the Hellenic world during the fourth century B.C. there are two that stand out for the fame of their works, and also for their friendship and rivalry. They are Apelles and Protogenes. Apelles was Alexander the Greats favorite painter whom, according to sources,

• Poena cullei, the Roman penalty that consisted of being put in a sack with animals

  Throughout history, from his beginnings to the present, Man has shown an extraordinary imagination to invent penalties and sentences. And, regardless of their level of civilization, some peoples achieved a special degree of refinement. This is the case of the Romans, one of whose forms of punishment

• The mistake the Persians made in 513 BC, repeated by the French in 1812 and the Germans in 1941

  It is a very popular saying that history repeats itself, and another that no one stumbles twice on the same stone. To them should be added that you learn from history , and then it is quite unusual that up to three rulers from three different eras could have made the same mistake, seemingly learning

• The sacred ships of Athens that gave rise to the Paradox of Theseus

  We are going to talk today about the Athenian sacred ships and we cannot think of a more fascinating way to start than by remembering the so-called Paradox of Theseus . It consists of asking if something material remains the same when all its parts are replaced, something that Heraclitus exemplified

• The disappearance of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

  In the mid-1950s, archaeologists made a sensational discovery at the site of the sanctuary of Olympia:tools for working gold and ivory, terracotta molds and a cup with an inscription appeared under a Byzantine church built in the middle of the sacred precinct. which put ΦΕΙΔΙΟΥ ΕΙΜΙ (I belong to Phi

• The impressive fortress of Roman origin on the rocks of Belogradchik

  Belogradchik is a small town located in the extreme north-west of Bulgaria (its name precisely means little white town ), in the foothills of the Balkan mountains. There are the so-called Belogradchik Rocks , which extend over an area of ​​90 square kilometers and reach 200 meters in height. It i

• How a Dutchman found Homer's tomb on the island of Ios

  According to Pausanias in his Description of Greece the poet Homer had once visited the sanctuary of Delphi, since there was a bronze statue of him there, on a stele on which was written the answer that the oracle gave to his question. According to tradition, the question that Homer had asked the

• How in ancient Rome the hours were shorter in winter than in summer

  That the days have 24 hours is a long-established convention, which is also related to the rotational movement of the Earth. Pliny the Elder already expressed it as a fact that left no room for doubt: But, as surprising as it may seem, the hours did not always last the same. And it is that before t

• Amphiaraus, the forgotten oracle who also answered the question of King Croesus of Lydia

  The story is one of the best known of antiquity. Seeing his kingdom threatened by growing Persian power, King Croesus of Lydia sent in 560 B.C. emissaries to the main oracles of Greece and Egypt with instructions to ask the same question on the same day and at the same time. The objective was to che

• Scythian archers, the policemen of ancient Athens

  This funny dialogue corresponds to The Tesmophorians , a comedy written by Aristophanes in 411 BC. which takes place during the Tesmoforias, homonymous festivals that were celebrated in honor of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. When the Athenians plan to take revenge on Euripides for

• Spolia opima, the Roman trophy for defeating an enemy in single combat, was only awarded three times in history

  The dictionary of the R.A.E. defines the verb plunder as «to dispossess something or someone with violence or iniquity » and explains that the etymology of the term comes from the Latin exspoliāre , which in turn originated the word spolia (plural of spolium ) with which the Romans referred to loot,

• Commandaria, the oldest wine in the world that has been produced since 800 BC. in Cyprus

  When on May 12, 1191 Richard the Lionheart and Berengaria of Navarre were married in Limasol (Cyprus) after the English king had subdued the entire island, no expense was spared for the wedding banquet, within the possibilities of the moment. . It is not known what food or dishes were served for th

• Quintus Valerius Soranus, the tribune convicted of revealing the secret name of Rome

  Quintus Valerius Soranus was born around 140 B.C. in the town of Sora, a Latin municipality near Rome. Poet and grammarian, he became tribune of the plebs and wrote several works of which only a couple of verses of an elegy to Jupiter have survived. In it Valerio conceives the god as masculine and

• The long Roman siege of Lilibea, the last Carthaginian stronghold in Sicily during the First Punic War

  There are already several articles that we have dedicated here to the First Punic War. At least two of them, the one that deals with the battle of Cape Ecnomus and the one that reviews the history of the mercenary general Xanthippus, focus much of the attention on the Sicilian scenario and make cont

• Imilce, the Iberian wife of Hannibal Barca against the war with Rome

  Baeza is a city in the Andalusian province of Jaén whose historic center was incorporated in 2003 into the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among its most outstanding monuments is one that is especially curious because it is not in a museum but in the central Plaza del Pópulo:a female statue that decorat

• Burebista, the king considered the first unifier of Dacia, who supported Pompey against Caesar

  In 1980, the Ceausescu regime organized a peculiar event. It was the celebration of the 2050th anniversary of the unification of Dacia, a presumed state that encompassed the current Romania -but which would also have incorporated possessions of other related peoples, such as the Thracians and the Ge

• Kubaba, the only queen to appear on the Sumerian Royal List, may be the origin of the goddess Cybele

  The Sumerian Royal List is a list of kings of Mesopotamia that has been found in various archaeological and documentary artifacts, with slight variations. The best preserved of all, and the one with the longest list, is the so-called Weld-Blundell Prism, a vertical clay prism inscribed in cuneiform

• Margites, the comic poem that parodied the Iliad and the Odyssey and was also attributed to Homer

  In ancient times, both the Iliad like the Odyssey they were considered historical accounts that had really happened, as they had been transmitted, first orally and then in writing. Its author was Homer, a bard whose existence was also not questioned, despite the fact that it was hardly known that he

• Alimenta, the charity program created by Trajano to care for poor children

  Who was going to tell Quintus Flavius ​​Postumius Quietus that he would go down in history and, eighteen centuries after his death, his name would continue to be remembered. He was a simple prefect and probably no one would remember him if it werent for the fact that he was the last Roman official t

• An analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that they were written by different scribes imitating the same style

  The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered some seventy years ago, are famous for containing the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and many hitherto unknown ancient Jewish texts. However, the scientists did not know who was behind the scrolls because the scribes were anonymous. Now, combi