HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-08-06T09:04:13.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Wanderlust: Bettany Hughes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
items: When gods go to war: what was the Titanomachy of Greek mythology?
items: Zeus's children: who were the offspring of the god with a libido that couldn’t be contained
items: King of the gods and sex pest: the legend of Zeus and his thunderbolts
items: Ancient Greek warrior women: the extraordinary female figures who shaped the Greco-Persian Wars
items: Ancient Greek theatre: everything you wanted to know
items: The history of Athens: exploring the birthplace of democracy and philosophy
items: Dragons: from mythological beasts of history to the fire breathers of fantasy
items: What was the Truman Doctrine?
items: The Elgin Marbles: what are they and where are they located?

Wanderlust: Bettany Hughes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
type: item
date: 2025-08-01T12:00:07.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
description: The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were daring and dazzling constructions that have burned bright in the human imagination right up to the modern day. Bettany Hughes follows in the footsteps of the ancients to tell their remarkable stories
encoded: Crawling underneath Egypt’s Great Pyramid, 70 metres down, is an unforgettable experience. On hands and knees in the sand, as the descending tunnel gets narrower and deeper, the bedrock of the Giza Plateau presses in so close you can actually taste it. The rock is salty, because 50 million years ago this was all sea. I am not the first to have had this visceral, time-travelling experience. As well as the Greek and Roman tourists who left graffiti here, this subterranean tunnel, and the chamber which it led to, was described by the ‘father of history’ Herodotus, and some 2,300 years later was explored by the Italian tomb-raider Giovanni Battista Caviglia. Other passages in the Great Pyramid – a huge burial place for Egypt’s King Khufu – were charted by medieval Arabic scientists and desecrated by off-duty Napoleonic soldiers. Built more than 45 centuries ago, this pyramid, the oldest of the famous Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, has always been a catalyst for awe. And it is not alone. Across time, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the Pyramids at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria – have really mattered. They mattered so much that, in the epoch after Alexander the Great’s death, a bespoke catalogue, the Laterculi Alexandrini, was generated to group them together. Written in papyrus about 150 BC, it is our oldest extant evidence for a catalogue. We are not sure who created the list, but we do know that it was copied and shared, and that it has inspired poetry, prose and works of art for millennia. Don't miss... Bettany's new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is airing on Channel 5 from Saturday 2 August 2025 The precise entries vary a little: in some versions, the walls or an obelisk of Babylon are included; later, the Colosseum is mentioned; the Lighthouse has sometimes bee…

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When gods go to war: what was the Titanomachy of Greek mythology?
type: item
date: 2025-01-28T12:35:21.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Period
subject: Gods
description: Before Zeus could rule as the king of the ancient Greek gods, he had to defeat his father and the Titans in a decade-long war. It was either that or be eaten as a baby
encoded: In ancient Greek mythology, before the more famous Olympian Greek gods (think Poseidon, Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes and, of course, Zeus) came another group of deities: the Titans. These were the children of the primordial deities Uranus (the personification of the sky) and Gaia (Earth) and were ruled by Cronus. According to Theogony, an epic poem by Hesiod from the eighth century BC, Cronus had overthrown his father, castrating him in the process, but was warned that he would befall the same fate. To defy this prophecy, he made the somewhat extreme decision to devour his children as soon as they were born. This is when things began to go wrong for the Titans. Read more | The gods and their whims: your guide to ancient Greek religion He ate the goddesses Demeter, Hestia and Hera, along with the gods Hades and Poseidon. But the last child, Zeus, was saved from becoming a meal by his mother, Rhea. She tricked Cronus into eating a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead, and hid Zeus on the island of Crete. Once fully grown, he returned to fulfil the prophecy, forcing his father to vomit up his siblings before overthrowing him. Thus began the Titanomachy, a war between the gods that lasted 10 years. The Titanomachy explained On one side of the Titanomachy were the Titans led by Cronus, and on the other was Zeus and his allies – who included more than his recently regurgitated brothers and sisters. One of Zeus’s most important tasks in this contest for the universe was to free the Cyclopes (three one-eyed giants) and the Hecatoncheires (three enormous creatures with one hundred hands and fifty heads) from the deepest abyss of the underworld in return for their support. Listen | Natalie Haynes tackles listener questions on Greek myths, from ancient origins to modern reinterpretations Skilled craftsmen, the Cyclopes forged the thunderbolts that Zeus wielded as weapons, as well as Poseidon’s trident and Hades’ helmet, which gave him the power of invisibility. The immensel…

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Zeus's children: who were the offspring of the god with a libido that couldn’t be contained
type: item
date: 2024-12-26T10:02:48.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: Gods
description: The king of the gods in the ancient Greek pantheon had a notorious reputation for sleeping around, so it should come as no surprise that Zeus fathered a lot of children. When you’re nearly counting your offspring in three figures, though, that really is a big family
encoded: The king of the Greek gods could control many things: the weather, as the sky and thunder god; order and justice; his enemies, thanks to his thunderbolts; and the other Olympians, most of the time. The thing that Zeus couldn’t control was his libido. His mythology is littered with sordid tales of seducing other goddesses or mortal women, all to the knowledge and chagrin of his long-suffering wife Hera. He forced himself on the subjects of his desire or tricked them into making love to him, even transforming himself into animals to get close to them. Zeus raped the mortal Spartan queen Leda in the form of a swan, a myth that became a source of inspiration for Renaissance art. And when he became besotted with a young prince of Troy, Ganymede, he abducted the boy as an eagle to serve as the cupbearer of the gods. From his dozens of lovers came many children, possibly nearing 100, giving new meaning to his status in ancient Greek religion as the father of all. Here are some of Zeus’s most notable offspring, from the divine to the demi-god. Ares <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-1691897505-4f03772-e1734349737360.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="Ares, or Mars as he was called in Rome, in a 17th-century painting by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" title="Ares, or Mars as he was called in Rome, in a 17th-century painting by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)" /> Ares was one of the few children that Zeus actually fathered with his queen, Hera, although that did not help his reputation. A war god, he was generally disliked by the Greeks for his associations with bloodlust, brutality and chaos, so was not widely worshipped. While Ares went into battle accompanied by his sons Phobos and Deimos (fear and terror), his half-sister Athena was the war god to go to for military strategy and leadership. That said, the warrio…

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King of the gods and sex pest: the legend of Zeus and his thunderbolts
type: item
date: 2024-10-28T10:01:48.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Period
subject: Evergreen
subject: Gods
subject: Olympics
description: From narrowly avoiding being eaten by his father as a baby to seducing mortal women as a swan or a bull, there were some eye-catching myths about the thunderbolt-hurling god. Jonny Wilkes explores how Zeus came to top the Greek pantheon
encoded: Flowing hair and thick beard; heaving muscles that seem to fizz with electricity; and a thunderbolt clasped in one hand while he sits on a throne or stands on a mountaintop. That tends to be the archetypal depiction of Zeus. The king of the ancient Greek gods, and spiritual father of both deity and mortal, needed a powerful image. From Mount Olympus, he ruled over all as a protector and arbiter of justice, and as god of the sky and thunder the weather was his to command. Hence the lightning. What were the origins of Zeus? Zeus was the son of Cronus, leader of the Titans. They were a group of gods borne from a union of the Earth (personified as Gaia) and sky (Uranus) who existed before the more-famous Olympians. Upon hearing a warning that one of his offspring would overthrow him – much like he had done with his own father – Cronus made the extreme decision to devour all of his children after their birth. He swallowed three would-be goddesses, Hestia, Demeter and Hera, and two would-be gods, Hades and Poseidon, and would have had Zeus for dessert were it not for his wife’s quick thinking. Rhea managed to save the youngest of the children by tricking Cronus into eating a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. She then hid Zeus on the island of Crete, where he was nursed either by a nymph or a goat, depending on the version of the story, while warriors called Curetes clashed their weapons to make enough noise to drown out the baby’s crying. Zeus’s rise to power and the Titanomachy Once a man, which happened quickly for a Greek deity, Zeus made a triumphant return to take on his father. He forced Cronus to vomit up his five brothers and sisters, then, just had been foretold, set about overthrowing him. This began the Titanomachy, a ten-year war between with the Titans on one side and Zeus, the Olympian gods and their allies on the other. The powerful Zeus wielded the thunderbolt as a weapon and carried the aegis, a divine protective shield. As his mythology grew, so did hi…

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Ancient Greek warrior women: the extraordinary female figures who shaped the Greco-Persian Wars
type: item
date: 2024-07-05T12:18:40.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Daisy Dunn tells the story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the deeds of the extraordinary female figures who shaped them
encoded: Though I conquered you in battle while you still lived,” began Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, a nomadic tribe that ranged the Eurasian steppe, “You have utterly destroyed me.” The man she addressed was Cyrus the Great, founding king of the first Persian ‘Achaemenid’ empire – or at least, he had been. Now, his severed head dangled from the queen’s hands in a blood-soaked bag. We can only imagine how deeply this episode haunted Cyrus’s daughter Atossa. It is hardly surprising that when her husband, Darius I of Persia, set out to invade the territory of an equally aggressive nomadic tribe 17 years later, in about 513 BC, she did her best to dissuade him. Darius hoped making war on the Scythians would strengthen his empire’s eastern border. Would it not be better, Atossa asked him, to confront the Greeks instead? Darius disregarded Atossa’s advice. Little did he know, however, that he would one day be forced to do precisely what she’d suggested. Following a revolt of city-states, the Persians went into battle with the Greeks, triggering the outbreak of the Greco-Persian Wars. Read more | Women in ancient Greece: what were their lives like? The wars between the two powers in the first half of the fifth century BC were some of the most destructive in classical history. Fought across land and sea, the Greco-Persian Wars changed the landscape of the two mighty empires. They resulted in victory for the Greek city-states, though at a considerable cost. While the historical narrative of these events is populated by the men who led the various battles, women played important roles, which have too often been overlooked. What follows is an account of the wars foregrounded, as far as is possible, by the women who were there. Power and persuasion The story of the Greco-Persian Wars through the eyes of women begins with Atossa. Like many eastern kings, her husband Darius was polygamous, but of the six principal women in his harem, Atossa was the most politically engaged. According…

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Ancient Greek theatre: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2024-05-12T06:57:27.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Sarah Nooter answers listener questions on the world of ancient Greek theatre, from dramatic tragedies and side-splitting comedies to the rip-roaring ride of the satyr plays
encoded: Was tragedy or comedy the crowd favourite of the ancient Greek stage? Were audiences raucous and rowdy, or quiet and civilised? And how much do modern theatrical productions draw on their ancient antecedents? Speaking to Emily Briffett, classicist Sarah Nooter answers your top questions about the theatrical antics of ancient Greece – from advice on stage management to scatological humour.

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The history of Athens: exploring the birthplace of democracy and philosophy
type: item
date: 2023-08-10T08:51:31.000Z
creator: Paul Bloomfield
subject: General History
subject: Period
subject: History's greatest cities podcast series
description: The city that’s now the capital of modern Greece has been an influential hub of civilisation and culture for more than two and a half millennia. Paul Cartledge guides us on a concise journey through its turbulent and triumphant past
encoded: Legend tells of a line of seven kings who if real would have ruled Athens from around 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the first of whom was Cecrops I. During his reign, the Olympian gods Athena and Poseidon vied to become the new city’s deity; having gifted its people the olive tree, Athena prevailed – and the city was named after her. So runs one foundational myth. Ancient Athens: what do we know? Evidence has been found of habitation as far back as about 9000 BC. And in the late Neolithic, around 4000 BC, people were living in caves on the north side of the Acropolis. The National Archaeological Museum displays wonderful examples of painted pottery from this period, as well as artefacts from the next era of Athens’ history. Around the time of the legendary Cecrops I – the late Bronze Age, from around 1500 BC – the region of Attica around Athens, and indeed much of mainland Greece and Crete, was inhabited by a civilisation now known as Mycenaean. These were the people (mainly from the Peloponnese, but also Thessaly and Boeotia and Crete as well as Athens) who, according to Homer in his Iliad, attacked Troy under the great King Agamemnon. Archaeological evidence shows that Athens was one of the great centres of late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek civilisation and settlement. Such evidence includes the huge stones used to build walls on the Acropolis – limestone chunks so big that later Greeks thought they could only have been hefted by the one-eyed giants called Cyclopes. Also in this period, from about 1300 BC, Athenians began to be buried in the first cemetery, known as the Kerameikos or “potters’ quarter”, because it was sited where craftsman potters worked. Athens’ ‘dark age’ Around 1200 BC, major settlements across Greece suffered severe attacks and conflagrations – and it was in some of those fierce fires that clay tablets bearing the earliest-known Greek writing were inadvertently baked hard and preserved. These administrative tablets are inscribed with a syllabic script kno…

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Dragons: from mythological beasts of history to the fire breathers of fantasy
type: item
date: 2022-08-21T14:05:34.000Z
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: It’s brought its own unique brand of magic to everything from Game of Thrones to Harry Potter, but how did the modern dragon come into being? Daniel Ogden traces the six stages of the creature’s evolution in the west – from ancient serpent to medieval fire breather...
encoded: Every small child of the modern west can describe a dragon: it is a broadly serpentine creature (colour of choice: green); it has an animalian head; between its longish neck and longish tail it has a fattish body; it has four legs; it has a pair of wings; it can be somewhat spiky. Adults might add the further observation that the dragon of this shape is a thing of beauty. The internet is awash with contemporary fantasy images of the creatures, lovingly tricked out in elaborate detail. And this points up a paradox: although the function of dragons is to be creatures of ultimate terror, we just love them. Who cares about St George and his damsel in distress? It’s the dragon that makes the legend. And are the dragons not the cherries in the cakes baked by JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling and George RR Martin? House of the Dragon: the real historical event behind the Game of Thrones prequel It might not seem like it, but HBO's House of the Dragon has its roots in a very real civil war in the early medieval period known as the Anarchy – though there wasn't a dragon in sight <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/08/emma-d-arcy-as-princess-rhaenyra-targaryen-matt-smith-as-prince-daemon-targaryen-c30677b-e1660835825342.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Emma D'Arcy as Princess Rhaeneyra Targaryen and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon" title="Emma D'Arcy as Princess Rhaeneyra Targaryen and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon (Photo by Ollie Upton/HBO)" /> But the universality of this dragon-shape across the west should not blind us to the fact that it is artificial, a random collection of body parts drawn from different creatures of the natural world. So where does this amalgamation come from? How did the dragon so familiar to modern fans of fantasy fiction come to be? Daniel Ogden gets up close to the six evolutionary stages of the dragon... The massive snake dragons of antiquity To start answeri…

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What was the Truman Doctrine?
type: item
date: 2022-08-16T15:03:53.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Cold War
subject: Period
description: President Truman was willing to go to great lengths to halt the spread of communism – and in Greece and Turkey, he succeeded. But what was the Truman Doctrine and what was its significance?
encoded: While the Marshall Plan attempted to bolster the economies and domestic harmony of European countries after the Second World War, the Truman Doctrine was the United States foreign policy initiative aimed at keeping these states free from physical attacks by “armed minorities or by outside pressures”. No reading between the lines was necessary. This was the US’s clearly stated intention of ensuring that communist forces would not interfere with or undermine the sovereignty of its allies. This was unlikely to involve direct military action from the US, but instead would take the form of financial aid packages for countries attempting to withstand communist uprisings. President Harry S Truman announced the doctrine in a speech before a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947, specifically asking for the two Houses to agree to support packages for Greece and Turkey, both of whom – with their funding from the UK government having dried up – were facing extraordinary pressure from communist influence. Greece was in the middle of a bitter civil war, waged by left-wing guerrillas against the government of King George II, while Turkey was bowing to pressure from the Soviet Union for shared control of the strategically important Dardanelles Straits. Truman emphasised how time was of the essence, and how relying on the still-new United Nations to collectively act and swiftly respond was unrealistic. The threat was spreading – and spreading quickly. “The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. I must also state that, in a number of other countries, there have been similar developments.” It was, he stressed, time to act. Pledges of allegiance Explicitly framing his argument in terms of American interests (the third sentence of his speech had invoked “the national security of this country”), Truman managed to secure $400m in aid from Congress for Greece a…

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The Elgin Marbles: what are they and where are they located?
type: item
date: 2022-08-01T13:39:48.000Z
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Period
description: The Elgin Marbles, a collection of stone sculptures and inscriptions more properly known as the Parthenon Sculptures, were acquired by Lord Elgin in Athens, Greece between 1801 and 1805 and today live in London's British Museum
encoded: Purchased by the British crown from Lord Elgin in 1816, the Parthenon Sculptures were presented by parliament to the British Museum, where they have remained ever since. Greece has disputed the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures, maintaining that Lord Elgin removed them illegally while the country was under Turkish occupation as part of the Ottoman Empire. Lord Elgin was ambassador to the Ottoman court of the Sultan in Istanbul in the early 19th century. In 2022, the deputy director of the British Museum proposed a “Parthenon partnership” with Greece that could see the marbles returned to Athens after more than 200 years. In an interview with The Sunday Times Culture magazine, Jonathan Williams said that “the sculptures are an absolutely integral part of the British Museum,” but added “we want to change the temperature of the debate”. How much do you know about the Elgin Marbles? Here, we bring you the facts… What are the Elgin Marbles? The Elgin Marbles are sculptures from the Parthenon, a marble frieze temple (aka a Doric temple) on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, built in 447–432 BC and dedicated to the goddess Athena. The temple was “the centrepiece of an ambitious building programme on the Acropolis of Athens,” the British Museum explains. In 1687 the temple, which had stood for about 2,000 years, was largely destroyed during a war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, which was then occupying Greece. Why did Elgin remove the sculptures? According to the British Museum, Elgin was granted a firman (letter of instruction) granting him permission to take away the pieces “as a personal gesture after he encouraged the British forces in their fight to drive the French out of Egypt, which was then an Ottoman possession”. The legality of this document is today hotly debated. What is in the Elgin Marbles collection? The Elgin Marbles collection consists of roughly half of what now survives of the Parthenon. That is, 247 feet of the original 524 feet of frieze…

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