Why Augustus Should Be Remembered alongside Julius Caesar
Adrian Goldsworthy— Maybe sometimes a person can be too successful, or at least you are tempted to wonder this when you think about how Augustus is scarcely remembered these days. We have all heard of...
View ArticleWho Was Vespasian?
Today is Roman Emperor Vespasian’s birthday. And while he may not be as famous as some of predecessors, Julius Caesar or Augustus, for example, his Flavian Dynasty would rule the Empire for nearly...
View ArticleDavid and Moses: The Men, the Myths, the Legends
David Wolpe— David represents one strand of the Jewish tradition, one that these days causes so much pride and angst and generates so much news. Jewish religious history is divided, in some senses,...
View ArticleThe Beginning of the Roman Empire
Adrian Goldsworthy— Names and dates mattered a lot for the Romans, and so did legal formalities and appearances. On the 16th of January 2,042 years ago Rome’s Senate convened. The leader of the house,...
View ArticleHymnals and Haggadot: Six Books for Easter and Passover
This weekend is an important one for many as Jews give thanks for their freedom from slavery and Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you’re attending a Seder, going to...
View ArticleAmericanizing the Ten Commandments
Michael Coogan— In 2001, Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, installed a massive monument featuring the Ten Commandments in the courthouse rotunda. When ordered by a federal...
View ArticleHow Well Did Jesus Know His Bible?
Michael Satlow— Imagine Jesus as a boy. Growing up with his brothers and sisters in a Jewish home in the sleepy town of Nazareth, in lower Galilee, he almost certainly would have been circumcised,...
View ArticleSaving Civilization?
Robin Prior— I want to highlight the dangers to Western civilization if Britain had succumbed to Nazi Germany in 1940. But to do this, first I’ll make the point, illustrated over the course of history,...
View ArticleByzantium and the Rights of Women
Jonathan Harris— Ancient Greece and Rome are often seen as the origin of much that underpins the political systems of modern democracies such as the United States, from separation of powers to freedom...
View ArticleThe Persian Wars: Why We Must Attend to Sparta
Paul A. Rahe— The study of ancient Greek history in modern times has always been Athenocentric. It could hardly have been otherwise. Much of what was written about Hellas in antiquity was composed by...
View ArticleThe Olympians of Ancient Greece
Neil Faulkner— In the early days, the Olympics seem to have been an informal local festival with only aristocratic contestants. Athletes competed not so much as representatives of their cities – many...
View ArticleWas There a Spartan Mirage?
Paul A. Rahe— It has always been hard for outsiders to get their minds around classical Lacedaemon, or Sparta as it is more commonly called today. Even in antiquity—as a glance at Xenophon’s Regime of...
View ArticleImmortal Oracle: the Berlin Painter Speaks: An Interview with J. Michael...
David Ebony — In dark times of social turmoil, political upset, and the seemingly perpetual war and violence that define our present era, it helps to consider the art of the far distant past for some...
View ArticleA Maya Child’s Tale: The Origin of the Sun
Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos— In his field diary entry of October 30, 1960, ethnographer Marcelo Díaz de Salas wrote down a brief story that he’d been told by Miguelito, a young boy about 11 years...
View ArticlePride Month Bookshelf: LGBTQIA+ History, Cultural Studies, and Literature...
Presenting our Yale University Press Pride Month reading list—because celebrating #Pride2017, learning from the history of the movement, championing stories and contributions of LGBTQIA+ individuals,...
View ArticleThe Limits of Tolerance
Emily Katz Anhalt— The ancient Greeks were open-minded without being tolerant. They didn’t devise the world’s first-ever democracy by tolerating everything. Their unprecedented transition from...
View ArticleThe Paleo Diet in Ancient Civilization
James C. Scott— I am neither an advocate nor a practitioner of the Paleo diet. I love bread, pasta, butter, and yogurt far too much to forsake them altogether. On the other hand, I have made an effort...
View ArticleWhat is Religion?
Richard Holloway— As with many useful words, symbol comes from Greek. It means to bring together things that had come apart, the way you might glue the bits of a broken plate together. Then a symbol...
View ArticleExploring the Great Pyramid with Cosmic Rays
James Owen Weatherall— The Great Pyramid of Giza is more than forty-five centuries old. It has been broken into, explored, and looted by countless civilizations, ancient and modern. But it seems the...
View ArticleEp. 50 – The Art of Libation in Classical Athens
Explore the prevalence and the significance of images of liquids being poured from vessels in the fascinating and beautiful artworks of 5th century Athens. Yale associate professor Milette Gaifman,...
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