Slavery was a large part of the Roman Empire. Military expansion brought captives, to compliment the material wealth taken back to Rome. And there is strong evidence that these slaves were not always...
Archaeologists have presented gory visual evidence that problematic people were fed to lions in Roman Britain. Excavations at a Roman house in Leicester, England in 2017 unearthed a dirt-caked bronze...
Near the city of Gaza, 3,000 years ago, laid a city unlike any other in the world. The Greeks called it Rhinocolura, named for strange faces of the people who lived there – because every person there...
Immurement is a practice whereby a person is enclosed within a confined space with no exits. Normally, a person who is immured is left in that space till he/she dies, either of dehydration or...
As the world’s powers perpetually rise and fall, exile and banishment have forever been ubiquitous elements of human history. Exile and ostracism have afflicted individuals and nations, inspiring...
Public order in ancient Rome was a priority for the elite, who contrived a range of gruesome punishments for purportedly serious crimes deserving the death penalty. As a result, a day of fun and...
Doomed to forever roll a huge boulder up a steep hill, Sisyphus is a figure in Greek mythology who represents an impossible task. As his punishment in the Greek Underworld , each time Sisyphus neared...
A team of archaeologists in England have forensically analyzed the mutilated skull of a young Anglo-Saxon woman revealing that her nose, lips and possibly her scalp had all been sliced off while she...
In medieval societies , it was always quite important to preserve law and order, and to rightfully dispense justice. A just ruler secured himself an obedient populace, and often enough, justice was...
One of the more unusual aspects of the Medieval world was that animals could be put on trial like human beings. Yes, there was such a thing as legal animal trials! While the veracity of many Medieval...
For as long as societies have had to deal with crime, they’ve had to deal out punishment. In some, places, and situations the process was only meant to humiliate the guilty, but most of the following...
Tartarus is the infernal abyss of Greek mythology, which is used as a pit of suffering for the wicked and as a dungeon for the Titans. It is also the name of a deity, a primordial being that existed...
The Medieval period is often called (rightly or wrongly) one of the most brutal eras in European history. One of the most notorious features of the Middle Ages was the use of torture. Although...
Egyptian kings and pharaohs conquered entire nations, but if a person stole so much as an animal hide he could be whipped with 100 lashes and stabbed five times in the back… and then be sent back to...
Early Roman history is full of stories about the terrible fates that befell citizens who broke the law. When a certain Tarpeia let the enemy Sabines into Rome, she was crushed and thrown headlong...
BY THORNEWS If you offended a Viking, a normal reaction would be to kill you on the spot. If the murder took place in daylight with witnesses present and without trying to hide his act, the...
The death of Valerian is traditionally known as one of the most dramatic and unfortunate of all the deaths of the Roman emperors. The widely accepted story is that Valerian wanted to end the war with...
Mermaids are everywhere. In the past month alone they have surfaced in New Brighton, caused controversy in Asda, reinvigorated toast, partied with the Kardashians , transformed maternity and wedding...
We all know Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love and beauty, made sure that she was worshipped by punishing those who ignored her altars. One brief appearance of this wrath in the tale of Jason and the...
The Brazen Bull (known also as the ‘Bull of Phalaris’, the ‘Bronze Bull’ or the ‘Sicilian Bull’) was a type of ancient torture and execution device from ancient Greece. The story of the Brazen Bull...
When Pandora opened her box, as the Ancient Greek myth goes, all manner of evil was released into the world - ending the Golden Age of man and forsaking them to a life of death and rebirth. Being the...
The ancient Egyptians created a sophisticated economic system thousands of years ago. Although they may seem far removed from modern life, their inventions in the monetary realm provided the basis...
Down the millennia, right from the hoary Narmer Palette to the grand reliefs on the walls of the magnificent temples of Ramesses II and that of later rulers; Egyptian artistic canon depicted the...
From ancient times and even to this day, people consider fire one of the basic elements of the universe. Interpretations of fire in ancient mythologies vary greatly, with fire viewed as a creative...
