Mythologically descended from the hero Herakles, the Agiad dynasty of ancient Sparta reigned alongside the Eurypontids almost since the beginning of the city-state. When war was on the borders of...
The Isle of Apples, Isle of the Blessed, and the Otherworld. These titles have long been associated with the magical resting place of the early medieval king, Arthur Pendragon. A realm imbued with...
In most parts of Europe, the medieval period ended around the fourteenth century, right around the time Giotto introduced perspective into the art of pre-Renaissance Italy. Yet for the twelfth...
The impotence trials of prerevolutionary France sound a bit like a political joke. France had mostly squelched the ability for couples to divorce, and it was in the wake of this that the impotence...
"Mistress of the Labyrinth", "the Great Goddess", "The Potnia ." These three terms have long been used, somewhat interchangeably, to describe the original forms of Ariadne, a Cretan princess who has...
Iran’s Arg-e Bam, Bam Citadel, once stood as a pillar of longevity in the Middle East. Created upon the beginnings of the Achaemenid Empire (6th-4th centuries BC), and building on the commercial...
The term “racism” refers to a phenomenon of group hatred or bigotry based on ethnic and cultural prejudice. In the United States, the term is most often heard in conjunction with the descriptors “...
Gladiatorial fights, sea battles, criminal (and Christian?) executions. These are only a few of the events, if they can even be called such, that happened in the walls of the Colosseum. Known during...
Once the stunning capital of the Persian Empire (also known as the Achaemenid Empire), Persepolis was lost to the world for almost nineteen hundred years, buried in the dirt of southwestern Iran...
To say that the Roman Empire had its ups and downs would be the understatement of all understatements. No “nation” was more abruptly destabilized or even more abruptly stabilized than that of ancient...
A man who needs no introduction, Gaius Julius Caesar is more than well known for the stories he spearheads—namely, his numerous military victories. (Although, even his defeats somehow sound rather...
The word “hermit” often elicits thoughts of men with long, scraggly hair and beards, eyes lined with wrinkles and filled with wisdom, and clothes a bit torn and dirty but otherwise, no worse for wear...
A god of nourishment in ancient Greek myth, Trophonius is a little-known character with a rather great role in ancient mythology. Though his exploits range from innocent to deceitful, Trophonius made...
The rolling green hills outside of Ireland hold more history than can be seen. Legend blends into folklore, and folklore transforms into history. Knowth, located not far from Dublin, is part of a...
Bacchus into Jesus. This is a topic seen many times before and its relevance continues here. As mentioned in a previous article , the attributes of the Greco-Roman god of wine, transformation and...
Ask anyone who has ever seen Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones —witnessing a Bolton "hunt" is rarely a good sign. So too is the case for the supernatural Wild Hunt of European myth. A phenomenon...