For many centuries Sicily was part of the wider Greek world and this can be seen in the many spectacular monuments and ruins on the island. One of these is the Greek theatre at Syracuse. Syracuse was...
Many of us tend to think that the people of early cultures were less sophisticated than us. The wealthiest people may have lived lives of luxury with gold and slaves, but admittedly we cannot really...
The city of theater was Athens. Athens birthed drama, bred drama, and ultimately was responsible for cultivating it into the premiere art of the Classical world—at least according to Greek...
Before Shakespeare, there were the Greeks. The infamous "all the world's a stage" quote attributed to the Elizabethan writer in the 16th century far more accurately describes the world of ancient...
One day Hodja and his students were on the way to their lesson. Hodja was sitting backwards on his donkey. "Hodja, they asked him "Why on earth do you sit that way? Isn't it uncomfortable?" "If I sit...
The disease that causes the bodily deformations of the Pulcinella character (Punch in Britain) have been the subject of speculation among doctors since at least the 19 th century. Pulcinella’s humped...
In the theater of Ancient Greece, one of the three main dramatic forms was comedy (the other two being tragedy and satyr plays). Greek comedy has been divided by the Alexandrian grammarians into...
Short and succinct, the tale of Thorstein Shiver is one of the more comedic sagas and can be interpreted in at least two different ways: as religious or cultural propaganda. The saga tells the brief...