Ancient History Magazine

Traces of pigments have been found on marble sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon of the Acropolis in Athens, confirming that their original appearance was colourful and naturalistic, not white as they are today. A team from the British Museum,

Having been closed for half a century, tourists to Rome can now explore the Domus Tiberiana once again. The visible superstructure of the palatial building climbs up the side of the Palatine hill in a series of bonded brick and cement arcades and vau

Left undisturbed and unlooted for 2000 years, a mausoleum has been discovered in Campania. When entered it was found to contain human remains on a bed and frescoes. During excavations conducted ahead of laying new infrastructure for a public water su

Of the many Cleopatras of the Ptolemaic dynasty, Cleopatra VII is, without question, the most famous. The last of the Ptolemaic pharaohs, her reign marked the end of the Hellenistic period and the beginning of the Roman Principate. Thoroughly embroil

The dominant image of the Scythians is of hordes of nomads travelling across the steppes with their covered wagons and vast herds of horses, never settling in one place. Herodotus, however, wrote that the Scythians consisted of both pastoralists and

From natural philosophy to geography and ethnography, the Greeks were curious about the world and its many different inhabitants. They explored sailing routes and coastlines, planting colonies throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, encounter

Imagine, for a moment, that it is the sixth century BC. A lone herder watches over his grazing cattle somewhere on the western Eurasian steppe. A low rumble drifts towards him, at first barely a whisper, then slowly but surely, a dust cloud forms out

In the latter half of the fourth century BC, while Alexander the Great and his successors were reshaping the Greek-speaking world away to the south, on the northern bank of the great Dnipro River, a tribe of Scythian nomads gathered to bury their kin

Northeast of the modern Turkish city Kayseri, which lies in the shadow of the dramatic extinct volcano Erciyas, the landscape opens in a fertile plain surrounded by low mountain chains. In the middle, close by a village called Karahöyük lies the arch

During my studies, I delved into culinary history and cooked many historical dishes, from antiquity to the Second World War, but the Roman kitchen was my favourite. It wasn't until a few years after my studies that I had the courage to try the Villa

There is a common misconception that the phrase ‘caesarean birth’ derives from Julius Caesar's birth. This story can be traced back to Pliny the Elder, who remarked that the name ‘Caesar’ comes from the verb ‘cut’ (caes-) because “The first of the Ca

In the early empire, the supply of equipment to the Roman army was fairly decentralized. Fortresses contained workshops (fabricae) where equipment would be maintained, and in some cases produced, by soldiers with specialist skills. But much of this w