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Iris Online New eyes for old worlds

Is it wrong to talk of ‘rights’ in ancient Greece?

Have a look at the following quotation from Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War (book 6 chapter 92). The original Greek words are written underneath the English ...

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Trial by Poetry: Phillis Wheatley and her Classical Inheritance

Thou who did'st first th' ideal pencil give,And taught'st the painter in his works to live,Inspire with glowing energy of thought,What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote.Muse! lend thy aid, nor let ...

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Homeric war on film

Cinema has provided many opportunities for the ancient world to be presented in challenging ways. The Homeric epics being one of the main mythological sources of antiquity and having influenced the ...

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A Lysistrata you can believe in

Three years ago, as America voted for change which they could believe in, I - and millions of other people like me - pondered what was surely the central question: whither now satire? And, most ...

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Interviews

(Not Quite) Thoroughly Modern Martha.

The clock struck thirteen as I stormed the ominous portals under the battlements of the British...

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A chat with Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye

In the midst of the apocalyptic storms that March had sent to whirl around the streets of London,...

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A Day in the Life of a Classicist

Classics is immensely transferable as a subject, and its students go on to almost every walk of...

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Travel

Great Cities of the Roman Empire - Tarragona, Spain

Welcome to Colonia Julia Urbs Triumphalis Tarraco. Better known to us today as Tarragona, it is...

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Samothrace - Moving to a remote Greek island

The 180 km squared Greek island of Samothrace in the North Aegean is dominated by the 1600 metre...

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Dougga By Day

Tunisia, a richly historical land at present under-going a (one hopes, short) period of political...

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Great Cities of the Roman Empire - Nîmes

Le Midi is the name the French have given to the beautiful, southern region of their country and if...

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When in Rome use the underground

It isn’t surprising that Rome’s Underground/Metro system is smaller than that of London’s - after...

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Bacchus in France

Philippa Williams searches for the god of wine in Aquitaine.

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