Parhaat Ancient History Podcastit (2025)

1
Jennifer T. Roberts, "Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture" (Princeton UP, 2024) 1:38:33

6h ago1:38:33

1:38:33

Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture (Princeton UP, 2024) is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of…

1
How an Empire Ends: 75 Years Under Hunnic Dominion 1:10:12

2d ago1:10:12

1:10:12

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we talked about how the Visigoths came to be: forged in the fire of the Gothic War of 376-382 and the immigration crisis that went along with it. Now, we’ll take a look at what happened to their kin who stayed on the northern side of the Danube—the Greuthungi who were …

1
Gladiator II with Alexandra Sills 1:19:38

23d ago1:19:38

1:19:38

Rounding out our trilogy of special episodes on Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, we are joined by gladiator expert, Alexandra Sills. Special Episode – Gladiator II with Alexandra Sills Alexandra holds a BA in Classical Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London and a MA in The Classical Mediterranean from the University of Leicester. Alexandra…

1
Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD 400-1400" (Birlinn, 2025) 1:01:12

6h ago1:01:12

1:01:12

Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland explores the interaction of human populations with land, waters, forests and wildlife. A Land Won From Waste: Scotland AD 400–1400 (John Donald/Birlinn, 2025) by Professor Richard Oram takes the reader…

1
Korshi Dosoo and Markéta Preininger, "Papyri Copticae Magicae: Coptic Magical Texts, Volume 1: Formularies" (de Gruyter, 2023) 1:28:50

1d ago1:28:50

1:28:50

Papyri Copticae Magicae: Coptic Magical Texts, Volume 1: Formularies (de Gruyter, 2023) offers an accessible repository of edited Coptic magical texts. The book is a careful and thorough edition and philological study of thirty-seven distinct Coptic manuscripts, covering a wide range of magical applications—from love spells, to curses, to exorcisms…

1
Timothy A. Lee, "The Syriac Peshiṭta Bible: The New Testament" (Gorgias Press, 2023) 30:41

6d ago30:41

30:41

This is the first Syriac reader for the New Testament. It guides the reader through the Syriac New Testament Peshitta, glossing the uncommon words and parsing difficult word forms. It is designed for two groups of people. First, for students learning Syriac after a years’ worth of study this series provides the material to grow in reading ability f…

1
Pāṇḍitya: Mapping Sanskrit Texts Online 49:25

9d ago49:25

49:25

Tyler Neill discusses the new platform Pāṇḍitya, an online graph visualization tool illustrating connections between works and authors in the Pandit Prosopographical Database of Indic Texts. It also facilitates exploration of the Sanskrit E-Text Inventory (SETI) as an overlay on the Pandit network. Tyler's blog "Sanskrit and Tech with Tyler" is her…

1
Elaine Pagels, "Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus" (Doubleday, 2025) 39:53

11d ago39:53

39:53

Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus (Doubleday, 2025) she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish …

1
Andrew Griebeler, "Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 1:04:24

12d ago1:04:24

1:04:24

A richly illustrated account of how premodern botanical illustrations document evolving knowledge about plants and the ways they were studied in the past. Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean (U Chicago Press, 2024) traces the history of botanical illustration in the Mediterranean from antiquity to the …

1
Andrew Ollett, "The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō): A Prakrit Work of Poetics" (UniorPress, 2025) 55:18

16d ago55:18

55:18

The Mirror of Ornaments (Alaṅkāradappaṇō) defines and exemplifies 42 figures of speech or “ornaments” in 134 verses. It is the only surviving work of poetics in Prakrit, a literary language closely related to Sanskrit. It is one of the earliest representatives of the larger Indian discourse on poetics, and is especially closely linked to Bhāmaha’s …

1
How an Empire Ends: the Starving Camps 1:16:02

16d ago1:16:02

1:16:02

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last few episodes, we’ve told you what we know about pre-Roman Gothic archaeology, culture, and history. We’ve told you about conditions both inside and outside the Roman Empire that kicked off the Migration Era. And now we’re going to tell you the story of one of those Gothic Wars …

1
Brendan Haug, "Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 59:11

18d ago59:11

59:11

Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm (University of Michigan Press, 2024) is the first environmental history of Egypt’s Fayyūm depression. The book examines human relationships with flowing water from the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE. Until the arrival of modern perennial irrigation in the nineteenth…

1
Donald S. Prudlo, "Governing Perfection" (St. Augustine's Press, 2024) 24:18

21d ago24:18

24:18

"In the beginning, God administrated." For as Donald Prudlo observes, "There can be no achievement without administration." In this book he seeks to restore the idea that while administration is necessary even in the institutional Church, holiness is not only possible for those charged with governance, but is a fulfillment and type of Christus Rect…

1
Paul Chrystal, "Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome" (Reaktion, 2025) 58:56

22d ago58:56

58:56

Both humorous and shocking, Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome (Reaktion, 2025) by Paul Crystal is filled with astonishing facts and stories drawn from ancient Greece and Rome that have rarely been retold in English. It explores ‘the incredible’ as presented by little-known classical writers like Callimachus and Phlego…

1
Christy Cobb and Katherine A. Shaner, "Ancient Slavery and Its New Testament Contexts" (Eerdmans, 2025) 1:11:57

23d ago1:11:57

1:11:57

The institution of slavery permeated the ancient world, such that the realities of slavery and its long shadows pervade the New Testament and other early Christian texts. Yet enslavement remains an under-taught aspect of the context of the New Testament and early Christianity, leaving pastors, laypersons, and neophyte college students alike to fill…

1
Monika Amsler, "The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:06:42

24d ago1:06:42

1:06:42

The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture (Cambridge UP, 2023) argues that the Talmud must be read and understood in the broader context of late ancient discursive and material contexts of books, rhetoric, and technology. As Dr. Amsler’s work reveals, the structure and form of the Talmud point to knowledge and mastery of rhetorical traini…

1
Laura Spinney, "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 55:44

25d ago55:44

55:44

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these English, Icelandic, and Iranian words, and you can hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely, miraculous journeys. For all of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient source. In a…

1
Cam Grey, "Living with Risk in the Late Roman World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) 1:14:26

26d ago1:14:26

1:14:26

Living With Risk in the Late Roman World (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)explores the ever-present experiences of risk that characterized the daily existence of individuals, communities, and societies in the late Roman world (late third century CE through mid-sixth century CE). Recognizing the vital role of human agency, author Cam Grey bases his argum…

1
Annalisa Marzano, "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome" (Cambridge UP. 2022) 49:23

27d ago49:23

49:23

Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Annalisa Marzano investigates the cultural and political dimension of Roman arboriculture and the associated movement of plants from one corner of the empire to the other. It uses the convergent perspectives offered by textual and archaeological sources to sketch …

1
How an Empire Ends: Rome's Gothic Immigrants 1:13:28

1M ago1:13:28

1:13:28

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we took a look at the outside forces driving the engine of the Migration Era: Hunnic migrations and invasions, constant displacement and conflict at the Roman borders. But Goths lived inside Rome too—in the heart of the Italian peninsula, and also in the outer province…

1
Shushma Malik, "The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm" (Cambridge UP, 2020) 43:35

1M ago43:35

43:35

In The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm (Cambridge UP, 2020), Shushma Malik reconstructs the means by which the emperor Nero came to be identified with the New Testament's antichrist. Malik surveys the first four Christian centuries to show how Nero mythology developed, often in ways that were much more positive than we might exp…

1
Film review: The Return with Lottie Luke. 51:27

1M ago51:27

51:27

Join me and guest Lottie Luke as we discuss The Return, a film about Odysseus, well, returning to Ithaca. How did the film differ from the Odyssey poem and what were our general thoughts? As you might imagine there is reference to some nasty stuff - just be aware. You can find Lottie Luke as @myclassicsportal on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. There…

1
Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts 58:33

1M ago58:33

58:33

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, announced a recent purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus, just discovered, carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how cou…

1
John Nemec, "Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures" (Oxford UP, 2025) 53:57

1M ago53:57

53:57

Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures (Oxford UP, 2025) examines some of the most well-known and widely circulated narratives in the history of Sanskrit literature, including the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, Visnusarman's famed animal stories (the Panchatantra), Somadeva's labyrinthine Ocean of Rivers of Stories (the…

1
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity: A Study in Resilience" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:15:19

1M ago1:15:19

1:15:19

The city was one of the central and defining features of the world of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. Challenging the idea that the ancient city 'declined and fell', Andrew Wallace-Hadrill argues that memories of the past enabled cities to adapt and remain relevant in the changing post-Roman world. In the new kingdoms in Italy, France and Spain …

1
Mara Nicosia, "Syriac Lexis and Lexica: Compiling Ancient and Modern Vocabularies" (Gorgias Press, 2024) 1:01:34

1M ago1:01:34

1:01:34

Syriac Lexis and Lexica: Compiling Ancient and Modern Vocabularies (Gorgias Press, 2024) publishes the papers presented at the round table on Syriac lexicology and lexicography held at the 13th Symposium Syriacum (Paris, 2022). An international group of scholars approaches this field from several new angles and shows how much remains to be done, fr…

1
Ancient Sicily (pt7). Dionysius I: Poetry and Politics. 34:10

1M ago34:10

34:10

Bad poetry, bad behaviour and a bizarre use for heated walnut shells. In this episode I pick and and finish with Dionysius I of Syracuse. It's quite a rollercoaster with a dramatic finish. Episode notes at www.ancientblogger.com and if you a reading this then be a star and rate and review. Thanks to all those who keep coming back for more, your kin…

1
Christian Sheppard, "The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball: Lessons for Life from Homer's Odyssey to the World Series" (Greenleaf, 2025) 1:01:28

1M ago1:01:28

1:01:28

Who are you, how are you supposed to live, and what about happiness? Answers to age-old questions are offered in classic myths about heroes, gods, and monsters, and at the ballgame. In The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball (Greenleaf, 2025), author Christian Sheppard interweaves Homer’s epics with glorious stories from the green fields of America’s pastim…

1
How an Empire Ends: The Migration Era 59:33

1M ago59:33

59:33

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! It was the beginning of the Migration Era where the Goths’ history with the Roman Empire begins. The Migration era was a cycle of wars and conflicts lasting hundreds of years. Alaric’s sack of Rome was only a small part of it. What started it? Nobody knows. But it would have been an extrem…

1
William Dalrymple, "The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 39:01

2M ago39:01

39:01

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. In The Golden Road …

1
Roland Mayer, "The Ruins of Rome: A Cultural History" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:16:30

2M ago1:16:30

1:16:30

The beguiling ruins of Rome have a long history of allure. They first engaged the attention of later mediaeval tourists, just as they do today. The interest of travellers was captured in the Renaissance by artists, architects, topographers, antiquarians, archaeologists and writers. Once the ruins were seen to appeal to visitors, and to matter for t…

1
Special Episode - Gladiator II with Professor Martin Winkler 1:08:43

2M ago1:08:43

1:08:43

WARNING! This post and episode both contain spoilers! We are back to discuss Gladiator II, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s smash hit Gladiator (2000). Gladiator II is set in the joint reign of Caracalla and Geta. These emperors were brothers in real life, but not the creepy twins shown in the movie. However, let’s not get caught up in historical detai…

1
Sarah Bassett, "Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:20:15

2M ago1:20:15

1:20:15

How do we best see and understand the art of late antiquity? One of the perceived challenges of so doing is that this is a period whose visual production has been defined as stylistically abstract and emotionally spiritual, and therefore elusive. But this is a perception which – in her path-breaking new book – Sarah Bassett boldly challenges, offer…

1
Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 52:55

2M ago52:55

52:55

Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterlife. But, as Dr. Rune Nyord shows in Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife (University of Chicago Press, 2025), even today, our understanding of the Egyptian…

1
How an Empire Ends: Culture of the Goths 1:48:04

2M ago1:48:04

1:48:04

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, we delved into the archaeology of the pre-Roman Goths. But what about Gothic culture? What do we know about pre-Roman Gothic culture, before the Goths were Romanized? To get a real sense of what is authentically Gothic is really difficult. We don’t have much informatio…

1
William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Beautiful: Plato the Teacher and the Pre-Republic Dialogues from Protagoras to Symposium" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) 2:21:56

2M ago2:21:56

2:21:56

With Ascent to the Beautiful, William H. F. Altman completes his five-volume reconstruction of the Reading Order of the Platonic dialogues. This book covers Plato’s elementary dialogues, grappling from the start with F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who created an enduring prejudice against the works Plato wrote for beginners. Recognized in antiquity as th…

1
Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, "The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean" (U California Press, 2023) 43:07

2M ago43:07

43:07

The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2023) chronicles the earliest histories of familiar tropical Asian crops in the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean, from rice and cotton to citruses and cucumbers. Drawing on archaeological materials and textual source…

1
"T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism" (T&T Clark, 2019) 31:09

2M ago31:09

31:09

Second Temple Judaism is one of the more exciting burgeoning fields in biblical studies. Now, with T&T Clark's two-volume Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism, anyone can have a wealth of knowledge literally at their fingertips. Tune in as we speak with Daniel Gurtner, an editor and contributor to the encyclopedia, as we speak about this outstandi…

1
Managerial Bishops Rule! Peter Brown on Wealth in Early Christianity (JP) 52:16

2M ago52:16

52:16

Peter Brown's fascinating Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton UP, 2014) chronicles the changing conceptions of wealth and treasure in late antiquity and the first centuries of Christianity. For our 2020 series in the rise of money (we also spoke to Thomas Piketty a…

1
The Fall of Veii: Part II 1:20:50

2M ago1:20:50

1:20:50

The Fall of Veii is finally upon us – or perhaps we should say it was finally upon them! After a shameful defeat early in 396, the Romans decided to appoint a dictator. It is time for a Republican hero to burst into the spotlight. Welcome to the stage, Marcus Furius Camillus! Episode 159 – The Fall of Veii: Part II A Hero is Born Camillus is a lege…

1
Chance E. Bonar, "The Author in Early Christian Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 50:18

2M ago50:18

50:18

While scholars of ancient Mediterranean literature have focused their efforts heavily on explaining why authors would write pseudonymously or anonymously, less time has been spent exploring why an author would write orthonymously (that is, under their own name). The Author in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores how early Christ…

1
Catalin-Stefan Popa, "The Making of Syriac Jerusalem" (Routledge, 2023) 1:07:46

2M ago1:07:46

1:07:46

This book discusses hagiographic, historiographical, hymnological, and theological sources that contributed to the formation of the sacred picture of the physical as well as metaphysical Jerusalem in the literature of two Eastern Christian denominations, East and West Syrians. Popa analyses the question of Syrian beliefs about the Holy City, their …

1
Sumerian History with Marc Van De Mieroop 1:12:53

2M ago1:12:53

1:12:53

In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Salman Sayyid and Chella Ward spoke to Professor Marc Van De Mieroop about Sumerian history. They discussed the role that the so-called ‘Ancient Near East’ might play in reorienting history, from redefining the history of philosophy to telling a less Eurocentric story about writing and textual evidence. Marc is Pr…

1
Selena Wisnom, "The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 38:29

2M ago38:29

38:29

When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, seventh century BCE ruler of a huge swathe of the ancient Middle East known as Mesopotamia. After his death, vengeful rivals burned Ashurbanipal’s libr…

1
How an Empire Ends: Origin of the Goths 1:10:42

2M ago1:10:42

1:10:42

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! The Roman Empire stood for a thousand years. Many causes have been given for its downfall—but if just one group of people could be said to be culpable, it would be the Goths. They stormed its borders en masse, scored outsized victories that no one had won before, killed two emperors and ra…

1
Daemons, Tantra, and Cultural Exchange with David Gordon White 1:02:16

2M ago1:02:16

1:02:16

In this episode, Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with David Gordon White, a distinguished indologist and scholar of Tantra. Our conversation focuses on David’s most recent project tracing the transregional histories of spirits, gods, demons, and their associated rituals across Eurasia. Along the way, we dive into an intellectual conversation about do…

1
Alexandra F. Morris, "Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Plato’s Stepchildren" (Routledge, 2024) 40:20

3M ago40:20

40:20

Through a thoughtful investigation, Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Plato’s Stepchildren (Routledge, 2024) reveals often-overlooked narratives of disability within Ptolemaic Egypt and the larger Hellenistic world (332 BCE to 30 BCE). Chapters explore evidence of physical and intellectual disability, ranging from named indiv…

1
The Far Edges of the Known World with Owen Rees 1:00:07

3M ago1:00:07

1:00:07

We are super excited for this conversation. Owen Rees is the founder of the website badancient.com and we’ve been lucky enough to write a couple of articles over there on some misconceptions about the ancient Romans. So when we heard that Owen had a book coming out, we absolutely wanted to have a chat. Special Episode – The Far Edges of the Known W…

1
Vera Tiesler, "Ancient Maya Teeth: Dental Modification, Cosmology, and Social Identity in Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2024) 47:05

3M ago47:05

47:05

Dental modification was common across ancient societies, but perhaps none were more avid practitioners than the Maya. They filed their teeth flat or pointy, polished and drilled them, and crafted decorative inlays of jade and pyrite. Unusually, Maya of all social classes, ages, and professions engaged in dental modification. What did it mean to the…

1
Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:05:32

3M ago1:05:32

1:05:32

This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to power through her marriage to the short-lived King Clovis II. As regent for her young son, she promoted social and political reforms in …

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