HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-03-18T16:42:34.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The devastating Jewish revolt against the Roman empire
items: The ancient Romans knew the power of entertainment as propaganda – here's the proof
items: Is this the best routine to boost your health? Yes, according to an ancient Roman intellectual
items: Have archaeologists just found proof of ancient Carthage's legendary anti-Roman war weapon?
items: This ordinary ancient Roman object is still used today – and has hardly changed
items: 3,100 years ago, ancient Egyptian workers defeated a God-King – without using any weapons
items: The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
items: 4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?
items: From secret cults to Christianity, how did ancient Roman religion change so dramatically?
items: Meet the “grossly underappreciated” Roman emperor who became the enemy of the ancient world

The devastating Jewish revolt against the Roman empire
type: item
date: 2026-03-18T08:00:18.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
description: Barry Strauss reflects on the Jewish-Roman wars, exploring the roots – and legacy – of the conflict
encoded: It was under the rule of the infamous emperor Nero that the Great Revolt, the first of the Jewish-Roman wars, began, sparking many decades of continuous conflict. Speaking to James Osborne, historian and author Barry Strauss traces the story, following the the fate of the Jewish rebels and the legacy of the conflict.

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The ancient Romans knew the power of entertainment as propaganda – here's the proof
type: item
date: 2026-03-14T10:35:05.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: In ancient Rome, putting on theatrical plays was not just a form of entertainment – it became a powerful tool of propaganda
encoded: Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Antigone by Sophocles; Medea by Euripides. Each is a play from ancient Greece, still performed on stages across the world today. Roman plays, on the other hand, are much less common. “We might think of theatre today as belonging to the cultural sphere, but in ancient Rome, it belonged to an incredibly political sphere,” says Dr Jessica Clarke, a research associate at the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London and the author of A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Entertainment is never neutral,” she says, but in ancient Rome, the theatre was explicitly political. “In Rome they didn't have independent theatres, so they didn’t have shows put on outside of politically controlled events.” This fact, she says, means that plays from ancient Rome have failed to remain as relevant as their Greek equivalents. The history of ancient Roman theatre Roman theatre hadn’t always been so overtly political; early Roman theatre was a “hodgepodge” of traditions and practices from previous empires and different areas of modern-day Italy, Clarke says. The ancient historian Livy, who Clarke says is the main source of information we have on the origins of Roman theatre, draws a "very neat line from actors arriving from Etruria to Roman theatre," Clarke says. While Etruscan performances did influence what would become Roman theatre, there’s more likely a “complicated web” of things that became the Roman theatrical tradition, including Greek plays translated into Latin and farcical plays from Campania in southern Italy. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide In general, “Rome tended to absorb cultural influences, rather than inventing its own,” she adds – but it certainly gave theatre its own cultural significance. Theatrical shows would be put on at all kinds of events in Roman culture, including religious festivals, the triumphant returns of Roman generals…

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Is this the best routine to boost your health? Yes, according to an ancient Roman intellectual
type: item
date: 2026-03-07T10:35:13.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Pliny the Elder was an intellectual powerhouse of ancient Rome. Though not a physician, in describing the ideal daily routine of a Roman gentleman he revealed how the ancient elite believed health could be improved
encoded: In the first century AD, the Bay of Naples was fringed by villas belonging to ancient Rome’s political and military elite. The slopes of Mount Vesuvius rose above lush orchards and gardens, while trading ships came in and out of the harbour, bringing exotic imports. This was one of the most fashionable regions of the Roman empire – a retreat for senators, generals and imperial officials with vast reserves of political power and private wealth. Pliny the Elder lived here in the final years of his life. A senior Roman official, he had been a cavalry commander in his youth, later a provincial administrator, and eventually commander of the fleet stationed at Misenum (now Miseno, in the north-west of the Bay of Naples). Born around AD 23, he lived through the reigns of emperors such as Claudius, Nero and Vespasian, at a time when Rome governed vast territories stretching from Britain to north Africa and the near east. Alongside his public duties, he was an impressive scholar. According to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, he read and dictated notes almost constantly, wrote while travelling, and had books read aloud to him as he ate. His greatest work, Natural History, filled 37 volumes. It was an encyclopaedic attempt to catalogue all aspects of life and the natural world: astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, mineralogy, art and medicine. “He literally said: ‘I want to cover everything in the world’,” explains Dr Jess Venner, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It was ambitious, and he did pretty well.” The work survives today as one of the largest single texts to survive from antiquity, preserving fragments of earlier Greek and Roman science that might otherwise have been lost. That ambition shaped his thinking about health, including his views on exercise. “He’s very specific about what he likes to do in a day,” says Venner. By the first century AD, Roman notions of health rested on a sophisticated Greek-derived system, especially the Hippocratic tradition and Galen’…

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Have archaeologists just found proof of ancient Carthage's legendary anti-Roman war weapon?
type: item
date: 2026-02-27T10:46:21.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: During the Second Punic War, the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal led his forces to numerous victories. But did he really take war elephants across the Alps?
encoded: The Punic Wars – and the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) specifically – were a definitive chapter in the history of the ancient world. Fought between the formidable Mediterranean power of Carthage and the upstart Roman Republic, the conflict ultimately saw the balance of power shift decisively away from the Carthaginians and towards the Romans. Had Rome fallen, Carthage would have retained its influence, and Roman civilisation may never have grown out of its infancy. Instead, the Romans won. Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, at the end of the Third Punic War, eliminated its greatest rival. In victory, they took hold of the ancient Mediterranean, using it as a springboard for imperial expansion across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. It wasn’t until the invasions associated with Attila the Hun centuries later that Rome would again face such an existential threat. But that’s not to say that Roman victory was inevitable. During the apogee of the war, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca inflicted a series of devastating defeats on Roman armies. At Cannae in 216 BC, perhaps 50,000 Roman soldiers died in a single day – one of the worst military disasters in Roman history – while earlier victories at Trebia (218 BC) and Lake Trasimene (217 BC) had already demonstrated Hannibal’s military genius. Read more | Long before the ancient Roman empire, a rival superpower looked set for supremacy His most audacious, move, however, was none of these. Marching from Carthaginian territories in Iberia – modern-day Spain – Hannibal led an expeditionary force through southern Gaul and across the Alps, where he traversed the imposing mountainous slopes with a vast army that included war elephants. It was a force that arrived at the gates of Rome, pushing for a Roman surrender. It’s an astonishing story that underlines Hannibal’s determination, and most of all, his astounding logistical capabilities. But for all its fame, did it really happen? While many historians and arc…

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This ordinary ancient Roman object is still used today – and has hardly changed
type: item
date: 2026-02-25T16:27:50.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: From dealing with nits to learning the three Rs, ancient Roman childhood bore some striking similarities to the modern experience
encoded: Life for children in ancient Rome would have looked very different depending on where in the huge Roman empire you lived, what social class your family was from, and your gender. And while childhood in ancient Rome would have looked very different from the lives of children today, there were a few surprising similarities. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, Bettany Hughes, a historian and author of the children’s book There Was a Roman in Your Garden, explains that “there are strange things that connect the experience of being a child in ancient Rome with the experience of being a child in the 21st century.” One overlap between childhood today and in ancient Rome is the fine-toothed nit comb, designed to remove head lice. “Nit combs are exactly the same design as they were in the ancient world – this was obviously the perfect design because it hasn't changed over the millennia,” Hughes says. But while the nit combs of today tend to be made of plastic, the ancient Romans used a different material for theirs: boxwood, a type of wood commonly used for small, carved items. “Boxwood has slight antibacterial properties, which was probably a really good thing [because] if you have nits, you scratch. Boxwood would hopefully prevent the spread of bacterial infection,” Hughes says. “The Romans were very smart, and [people in] the ancient world were much better at understanding nature and us being a part of nature than we are today,” Hughes says. Boxwood wasn’t the only plant that the Romans used for medicinal purposes. According to writings by Dioscorides, a Greek physician who was considered to be an authority on plants and plant medicine in the Roman period, oil made from walnuts was also used on children’s heads – albeit to help with alopecia or baldness, and to make the hair “pleasing.” He also recommended the “scrapings” from various gourds or squashes to help with sunstroke in children, and said that if children ate peonies, it could help to prevent kidney stones. Fam…

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3,100 years ago, ancient Egyptian workers defeated a God-King – without using any weapons
type: item
date: 2026-02-21T10:45:11.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
description: Before picket lines and unionisation, ancient Egyptian artisans learned that collectively withdrawing labour could force even a pharaoh to negotiate
encoded: “1768 is really when the word ‘strike’ begins to develop out of the UK.” That’s the view of classicist Sarah E Bond, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. As Bond explains, the word ‘strike’ comes from a moment when sailors in the port of Sunderland decided to literally strike down the topsails of their ships, immobilising them until their demands were met by their bosses. The tactic worked, spread south to the shipyards of the Thames, and quickly entered the political vocabulary. But the behaviour the word came to describe – the collective withholding of labour – is actually far older. “What that word represents is an action that goes all the way back to the second millennium BC,” Bond says. Before the concept of money or coinage, workers had figured out a fundamental principle: stopping work was a way to force those in power to negotiate. The ancient Egyptian origins of strikes “Even if these words were not familiar to those within the ancient world, there are still methodologies within labour disputes that have been happening for thousands of years,” says Bond. One of the earliest, clearest examples of what would now be termed a ‘strike’ comes from ancient Egypt – a civilisation that was rigidly hierarchical and dominated by unquestionable royal authority. Beneath the monumental architecture and other cultural feats, Egyptian society depended on a vast pool of labour. Read more | Long before Cleopatra, another female pharaoh redefined ancient Egyptian power In the second millennium BC, during the reign of Ramesses III, Egypt had passed the peak of imperial expansion it had enjoyed a century earlier. Ramesses III ruled during the early 12th century BC, at the end of the New Kingdom, a period marked by mounting economic pressure, as well as internal and external instability. Ramesses III presented himself as a traditional warrior-pharaoh, defending Egypt against repeated Libyan incursions and threats from other foreign enemies, such as the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’.…

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The ancient Greeks had six essential tips for health. How many do you do?
type: item
date: 2026-02-19T11:28:09.000Z
creator: Serafina Kenny
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: With conflicting advice and endless new trends, it can feel hard to keep up with the modern health and wellness space. But ideas about how to live a healthy life are nothing new. Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks had their own list of requirements
encoded: Wellness might feel like a modern concept, attached to health-tracker apps, screen time, and green smoothies. But the concept of actively trying to lead a healthy life while keeping the body in a good state isn’t new. In fact, systems of preventative health stretch back more than 2,000 years to the medical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world. Speaking on the Life Lessons from History series from the HistoryExtra podcast, Sasha Handley, a professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester, says there used to be a “fantastic preventative healthcare culture” based on advice that dates back to ancient Greece. As she sets out, there was a list of six lifestyle factors and behaviours that physicians, medical practitioners, and ordinary people alike knew they had to take care of for their long-term health. These were the ‘six non-naturals’ and the ancient Greeks believed that “temperance of all of those six things was key to long-term good health, according to the wisdom of the time” says Handley. The term “non-naturals” described factors external to the body that could be managed or regulated, as opposed to “naturals,” which were the body’s innate characteristics So what were these six factors, and how much do they align with modern thinking? Fresh air The first non-natural to look after was fresh air – that is, “getting enough of it and making sure that you were not taking in fetid or corrupt air,” Handley says. The Greeks thought that ‘bad air’ could cause disease and advocated for good airflow within houses to lessen exposure to stagnant air. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide Today, we know there is no singular concept of ‘bad air’. But there are pollutants in the air that can be hazardous to people, and we do know that some diseases are airborne. Food and drink It was considered important that a person was “eating and drinking the right kinds of things for [their] bodily constitution, but also …

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4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?
type: item
date: 2026-02-17T16:03:54.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Archaeological evidence from one of the High Arctic’s most dangerous marine environments reveals that the region’s earliest inhabitants were expert seafarers who undertook perilous open-ocean journeys
encoded: Archaeologists have repeatedly underestimated the seafaring abilities of prehistoric peoples. From the maritime traditions of Polynesia to the first crossings into the landmass known as Sahul – the prehistoric continent that once connected Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania – over 60,000 years ago, claims of early ocean travel have often been met with raised eyebrows. After all, it can be difficult to imagine how these humans crossed vast spans of dangerous water with such limited technology. The prehistoric people who inhabited the Arctic have been no exception to this scepticism. Archaeologists refer to these early Arctic inhabitants as Early Paleo-Inuit: small and mobile hunting communities who lived across northern Greenland and Arctic Canada between roughly 4,500 and 2,800 years ago. For much of the 20th century, archaeologists assumed these communities were a land-based people, edging into frozen landscapes as ice sheets retreated, opening up new inland routes, rather than venturing across open water. This view was shaped in part by the scarcity of evidence for boats and marine hunting technology, because organic materials such as boats, paddles and skins rarely survive in the archaeological record. This lack of preservation is still a problem faced by archaeologists today. As a result, the true extent of prehistoric maritime activity in the Arctic – and across the globe – has long remained uncertain. But a new discovery from northern Greenland is now challenging this long-standing view, providing the strongest evidence yet for something some Arctic specialists have long suspected. How the Early Paleo-Inuit reached northern Greenland In the far north of Greenland, beyond the limits of permanent modern settlement, sits a small archipelago called Kitsissut. More than 700 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, this cluster of islands sits at a similar latitude to Norway’s Svalbard; one of the coldest and most ice-bound places on Earth. Reaching these islands by …

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From secret cults to Christianity, how did ancient Roman religion change so dramatically?
type: item
date: 2026-02-14T11:15:15.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Ancient Rome didn’t abandon its gods overnight. The rise of Christianity was a slow transformation of the cult-based religious order that had structured Roman life for centuries
encoded: The word ‘cult’ is a loaded one in modern language. It might make you think of hooded figures huddled in dark rooms, perhaps organised around a singularly charismatic leader who exercises immense control over members’ lives. But in the ancient Roman empire, cults were an ordinary cornerstone of society and a pillar of religious life. This difference between modern and ancient Roman notions of cults is central to understanding one of the most significant social transformations in western history: how the Roman world moved from a polytheistic system of many gods, to a Christian empire centred on a single deity – the Abrahamic God. As professor Philip Freeman explains, “the word cult tends to have a negative connotation, but it’s actually a good word, and we use it all the time in academic contexts.” So what exactly were these cults, and what impact did they have on the death of the old Roman gods, and the adoption of Christianity? Roman religion as social infrastructure The Romans were far less concerned with what individuals believed internally than with whether they performed the correct rituals in the proper way. There was no sacred book that defined orthodoxy, and no central institution equivalent to a church. Instead, religion functioned through a web of practices embedded in everyday life and anchored around cults. Cults were places where people met regularly, shared meals and honoured a god together. “Think of a cult as a social group,” says Freeman, who was speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. One of the clearest examples of a cult still exists beneath modern London. “If you go to the financial district, you can visit the Temple of Mithras in the basement of a bank,” Freeman says. This temple, dedicated to the god Mithras, was discovered in the 1950s. Mithraism was one of the most widespread cults in the Roman world, especially among soldiers and officials. Read more | Constantine the Great: the emperor who created Europe “That was a cult found all over the R…

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Meet the “grossly underappreciated” Roman emperor who became the enemy of the ancient world
type: item
date: 2026-02-03T11:18:15.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Ancient Rome’s reputation for bad emperors partly rests on hostile sources written after the fact – and Domitian may be the clearest case of how politics shaped historical memory
encoded: The moral map of the Roman empire might seem fairly simple. There were good emperors, who governed wisely and brought stability, and there were bad emperors, whose tenures dissolved into cruelty and paranoia. Nero and Caligula are the names most firmly and famously in the latter category – but Domitian, who ruled from AD 81 to 96, is often considered not far behind. But according to historian Edward J Watts our certainty about the flaws of these ‘worst’ Roman emperors rests on shaky foundations. And as for Domitian? “He is grossly underappreciated,” says Watts, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. How ancient Roman history was written Most surviving narratives of the early Roman emperors who followed Julius Caesar were written decades after the events they describe. Their authors were members of Rome’s senatorial and literary elite, who were deeply invested in the dynamics and mechanics of power. What they were not, Watts asserts, were neutral observers. Among the most influential was Suetonius, who Watts describes as “an incredibly gifted biographer”. His account The Twelve Caesars remains one of the most widely read accounts of imperial Rome. It gives us biographies of Julius Caesar, and then the next 11 emperors. Why end there? The answers, says Watts, is “because the last of them is the emperor Domitian”. Read more | Long before the ancient Roman empire, a rival superpower looked set for supremacy The narrative arc culminates in Domitian’s reign as emperor. He is presented as the endpoint of Rome’s moral and political decline. His assassination is framed as a cleansing restoration, clearing the way for a new and better order to take root. That framing shaped how later generations understood both Domitian and the nature of imperial power itself, says Watts. Caesar: Death of a Dictator Member exclusive | On the Ides of March 44 BC, the most famous Roman in history was murdered. Julius Caesar's assassination transformed Rome forever, and the image of his bloody to…

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