Ancient

As the TV series Ancient Worlds reaches its conclusion, its writer and presenter Richard Miles looks at the challenges of making a historical documentary.

J.H. Plumb comments on how the famous historian of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, sought a detached and truthful past, free from preconception or the idea of inherent purpose.

Little remains of the great North African empire that was Rome's most formidable enemy, because, as Richard Miles explains, only its complete annihilation could satisfy its younger rival.

At the height of the Roman Empire, hundreds of merchant ships left Egypt every year to voyage through the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean, exchanging the produce of the Mediterranean for exotic eastern commodities. Raoul McLaughlin traces their pioneering journeys. 

Richard Cavendish remembers the event that signalled the beginning of the end of the Western Roman empire 

The economic crisis in Greece has drawn attention to the question of where best to display treasures such as the Elgin Marbles. Jonathan Downs offers some solutions to a historical tug of war.

The legendary ruler of Pontus and creator of a formidable Black Sea empire was, until recently, one of the most celebrated figures of the Classical world, a hero of opera, drama and poetry. Adrienne Mayor, author of a new study of the ‘Poison King’, explains why.

Did the first Christian Roman emperor appropriate the pagan festival of Saturnalia to celebrate the birth of Christ? Matt Salusbury weighs the evidence.

Michael Scott looks at how a time of crisis in the fourth century BC proved a dynamic moment of change for women in the Greek world.

On the Mediterranean at the western edge of the Nile delta stands the most important and enduring of all the many cities founded by Alexander. Though much of its material past has been destroyed or lies underwater, Alexandria’s reputation as the intellectual powerhouse of the Classical world, fusing Greek, Egyptian and Roman culture, lives on, writes Paul Cartledge.

As the Roman Empire declined its leaders became interested more in personal survival than good governance. Sound familiar? Adrian Goldsworthy draws comparisons with current crises.

In the first millennium, Christianity spread east from Palestine to Iraq, and on to India and China, becoming a global religion accepting of, and accepted by, other faiths. But with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, Christianity’s eastern journey came to an end. Philip Jenkins recovers this lost history.