Search
Search Results

Definition
Ptolemaic Egypt
Ptolemaic Egypt existed between 323 and 30 BCE when Egypt was ruled by the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty. During the Ptolemaic period, Egyptian society changed as Greek immigrants introduced a new language, religious pantheon, and way of life...

Article
Famous Grammarians & Poets of the Byzantine Empire
In the wake of the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the intellectual collapse of Athens, Byzantine scholars engaged in preserving the Classical Greek language and its literature. Thus they became the guardians of a vanished culture...

Article
The Dexileos Stele: A Study of Aristocracy and Democracy in Greek Art
The Dexileos Stele assesses the way that Athenian political thought penetrated all levels of society, showing the conflict that the aristocratic classes were faced with in trying to find their place within the Athenian Democracy. As a visual...

Collection
Comedy & Tragedy: the Drama of Greek Theatre
Greek theatre likely sprang from the lyrical performance of ancient epic poetry and the rituals performed in the worship of the god Dionysos where goats were sacrificed and participants wore masks. From the 6th century BCE, Greek tragedy...

Article
Greek Vase Painters & Potters
We know the names of some potters and painters of Greek vases because they signed their work. Generally a painter signed his name followed by some form of the verb 'painted', while a potter (or perhaps the painter writing for him) signed...

Article
Greek vases: names, shapes and functions
The system of names used today for Greek vases has quite rightly been described by one leading scholar as 'chaotic'. Many of the names were first applied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by scholars who tried to fit the names of...

Article
How to Read a Maya Glyph
For over three centuries, the ancient Maya flourished in Mesoamerica. They built giant stone pyramids surrounded by dense jungle, used a calendrical system that made many believe that 2012 would be the end of the world, and created a writing...

Article
Elephants in Greek & Roman Warfare
In the search for ever more impressive and lethal weapons to shock the enemy and bring total victory the armies of ancient Greece, Carthage, and even sometimes Rome turned to the elephant. Huge, exotic, and frightening the life out of an...

Image Gallery
Gallery of Greek Temples
The architects of the ancient Greek world believed that temples should not just fulfil their purpose of housing a statue of a god or goddess but that they should be admired from both close-up and from afar. Consequently, a great deal of effort...

Video
Greek Goddess Artemis: Goddess of the Hunt and the Moon in Greek Mythology
The Greek goddess Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, wild nature and the moon in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Leto and Zeus, and the twin sister to Apollo, the god of the sun, medicine and music among others. Artemis was a patron...