HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-10-27T12:42:30.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
items: The ingenious Roman invention that sparked the ancient empire’s obsession with luxury
items: Ancient Roman theatre was a powerful weapon of empire, so why were actors' lives so tragic?
items: The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist
items: The Phoenicians: everything you wanted to know
items: Were the Amazons just a “male fantasy”? Here’s the truth behind the ancient world’s warrior women
items: What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
items: The Amazons: wonder-women of the ancient world
items: On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end
items: Would you kidnap a god? This ancient Mesopotamian empire did – and for a genius reason

This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
type: item
date: 2025-10-24T12:00:22.000Z
creator: Isabel King
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Gods
description: The strange and powerful symbol at the heart of one of history’s greatest temples reveals the importance of the goddess Artemis in ruling fertility, childbirth and nature
encoded: When we think of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may be the first examples that come to mind. However, the oldest-known versions of the list start with a landmark that is often forgotten: the Temple of Artemis. Located in the ancient city of Ephesus (near modern-day Selçuk, Turkey), this remarkable place of worship was renowned for its size and scale, standing at least 20 metres tall and boasting an enormous tile-covered roof supported by 127 marble columns. With a floor plan of some 6,000 square metres, the temple was also nearly three times as large as the famous Parthenon in Athens. But some of the most startling archaeological evidence from Ephesus isn’t concerned with the dimensions of the temple, nor its complicated history of destruction and rebuilding. Instead, much attention has been directed towards a collection of statues depicting the temple’s patron deity, Artemis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/BAL957668-36357fc.jpg" width="7715" height="4533" alt="A large temple with a triangular roof and many columns holding it up. It sits on top of a large flight of stairs. The roof has a mural of the goddess sitting in the middle and surrounded by crowds of people and two golden horses" title="A 20th-century depiction of the Temple of Artemis, dedicated to the goddess Artemis (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Rather than portraying the goddess as a conventional Greek beauty, the sculptures display Artemis in an altogether different guise. And, according to classicist and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, these statues bear a particularly striking physical characteristic. Read more | On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end “[This] is not the Artemis that you probably have in your heads… this image of a beautiful young woman in a tiny Greek chiton, artfully pulling a bow and arrow,” reveals Hughes on an episode…

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The ingenious Roman invention that sparked the ancient empire’s obsession with luxury
type: item
date: 2025-10-21T09:53:22.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Beneath the mosaic floors of Roman villas, an ingenious system of underfloor heating transformed warmth into a mark of power
encoded: Think of Roman engineering, and it might be the grandest feats that first come to mind: the towering aqueducts bringing water to towns and cities, the amphitheatres filled with cheering crowds, and the paved roads that stitched the Roman empire together. The hypocaust – the Roman system of underfloor heating – may be less staggering in its scale, but it remains one of the most recognisable features of Roman domestic life. Archaeologists still point to those distinctive stacks of bricks beneath villa floors as a mark of Roman sophistication. “The hypocaust system is really important for us to think about when we consider Roman homes,” explains Dr Hannah Platts on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It was important to them: that it heated their baths and their other spaces.” But they weren’t for everyone. Who owned homes with underfloor heating? And what did such comfort say about status and power? “I should reiterate, having your own bathhouse or having a hypocaust was a luxury,” says Platts. Rome’s underfloor miracle At its simplest, a hypocaust worked by circulating hot air through a hollow space beneath the floor. A furnace, or praefurnium, was stoked outside the building; hot air from the furnace was funnelled into a network of small brick pillars (pilae) that supported a raised floor. But it wasn’t just about heating the floor. Read more | How and why did the Roman empire fall? “The hypocaust was used to heat houses via underfloor heating, but actually we’ve got a number of houses where we’ve got evidence of box flue tiles in the walls,” says Platts. “So we know that hypocausts could heat the walls of the rooms as well.” In the context of ancient Rome this was engineering of incredible sophistication. Archaeological remains from sites such as Pompeii and Ostia, and across Roman Britain, show entire suites of rooms heated by the system. Stepping barefoot on a mosaic floor, warmed from underneath, was quite literally to step upon Roman ingenuity. <img src="https://images.…

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Ancient Roman theatre was a powerful weapon of empire, so why were actors' lives so tragic?
type: item
date: 2025-10-09T11:59:20.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: They performed before thousands and could become celebrities, yet actors in ancient Rome were stripped of their civic rights. What was life really like for the men who took to the Roman stage?
encoded: Roman society was acutely hierarchical. Every occupation carried a moral weight, and the line between dignity and dishonour was a stark one. A senator who spoke in the law courts could win eternal repute, but a gladiator who risked his life to entertain the masses was branded socially devalued, and the same was true of actors. No matter how dazzling their performances in front of a packed theatre might be, their profession consigned them to the lowest rungs of society. By law they were infamis; people of ill repute, stripped of civic rights and grouped alongside the enslaved. But what was this paradoxical life of stardom and shame really like for the actors of the Roman empire? Roman theatre’s golden age under Augustus “When we talk about a golden age of Roman theatre, we tend to be talking about Emperor Augustus’s reign and the beginning of the Roman empire,” says Jessica Clarke, author of A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “This was a period with new cultural, religious and political structures being implemented.” Augustus was the first emperor of Rome, ruling from 27 BC until AD 14. And he grasped how useful theatre could be as a political tool. Read more | The worst Roman emperors Spectacle was part of a strategy that Romans would come to call panem et circenses, or bread and circuses: free food and entertainment offered to the populace in return for loyalty and social cohesion. Drama and performance helped bind audiences into a shared Roman identity and provided a stage (quite literally) for imperial ideology. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-122211671-b717d9b-e1760010634986.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1st-century AD mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii depicts the staging of a theatrical performance. Such scenes highlight the importance of theatre in Roman cultural life, blending entertainment with expressions of myth, satire, and soc…

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The overshadowed ancient empire that rivalled Rome with maritime might and an iron fist
type: item
date: 2025-10-02T11:14:58.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Historian Josephine Quinn explores how the Phoenicians and their great colony, Carthage, built a maritime empire that once overshadowed both Greece and Rome
encoded: The Phoenicians founded one of antiquity’s greatest Mediterranean powers. An ambitious and powerful network of seafaring traders along the eastern Mediterranean coast, they built a commercial empire whose crowning capital was Carthage: a city that rivalled (and for much of its history outshone) both ancient Greece and Rome. It was from here that they imposed a ruthless influence across the region. “I feel like this is something that has been lost in ancient histories that move from Greece first to Rome second. They miss out this massive third power, which was sometimes bigger than both,” says historian Josephine Quinn, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. But this great power began only as a cluster of small port cities, overshadowed by mighty neighbours. So how did the Phoenicians rise to command vast trade routes, create colonies across the western Mediterranean, and challenge the future dominance of Rome? The Phoenicians: masters of the seas Centred on the harbours of modern-day Lebanon and Syria – notably Tyre, Sidon and Byblos – the early Phoenicians developed a reputation as “extraordinary navigators”. “They discovered the Pole Star and founded settlements in the western Mediterranean long before the Greeks were sailing around the region,” explains Quinn. Read more | Ancient Roman theatre was a powerful weapon of empire, so why were actors lives so tragic? As pioneers of open-sea sailing who steered by the stars, they also proved formidable traders. They carried cedar wood, glassware, textiles and most famously purple dye made from murex shells – a commodity so costly that it became the colour of kings. For centuries they acted as middlemen of the Mediterranean, linking Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and beyond. Their alphabet, a streamlined script of 22 letters, spread westward and would later form the basis of Greek and Latin writing systems. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-122321640-58d95d9-e175940353277…

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The Phoenicians: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2025-09-14T07:00:52.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Josephine Quinn shines a light on the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean, who – despite leaving an extraordinary legacy – have been relatively overlooked in history
encoded: They gave us the alphabet, charted the seas by the Pole Star, and built Carthage – once Rome’s greatest rival. So why have the Phoenicians been forgotten? Speaking to Emily Briffett, historian Josephine Quinn explores the story of these ancient seafarers, traders and city-builders who connected the cities surrounding the Mediterranean – and left an extraordinary legacy – long before Greece and Rome rose to power.

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Were the Amazons just a “male fantasy”? Here’s the truth behind the ancient world’s warrior women
type: item
date: 2025-09-11T10:35:24.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Greek myths of the Amazons blended kernels of truth with male fantasy to create a legend that has lasted for millennia. Here’s the truth behind the Amazons, and why the notion of warrior women fascinated and unsettled the ancient world
encoded: Few figures from antiquity capture the imagination quite like the Amazons: fearsome warrior women who fought Greek heroes, rode horses into battle and lived in societies ruled by beautiful and terrifying queens. From epic poetry to vase paintings, they endured as unique symbols of female power and independence in the world of ancient Greece. But were the Amazons ever real? According to Professor David Braund, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, the answer is both yes and no. “There are two ways that we use the word ‘Amazons’. There’s a general way to mean women who fight, and if you want to know whether they existed in the ancient world, for sure they did.” In other words, some women certainly did hunt, fight and join pitched battles when their cities were under attack. These women slot into the archetypal image of an Amazon woman: fierce fighters who subverted the typical roles of women who lived in the ancient world. But what about the specific Amazons of Greek myth? The horse-riding warrior queens depicted on temples and vases? Braund argues that these were creations of the Greek imagination, shaped as much by male fantasy as by fragments of reality. Real women who fought across the ancient world The notion of women taking up arms was not purely mythical. Ancient sources, and modern evidence, suggest that some women did fight in exceptional circumstances. Read more | Ancient Greek religion “There were women who certainly went hunting and used weapons, and almost certainly participated in battles at times when their city was under attack,” Braund says. These women were not part of a single all-female society. They were members of families and communities who took up arms in moments of crisis. The ancient Greeks, however, wove these scattered examples into stories of an entire nation of warrior women – an idea that both fascinated and disturbed them. The Amazons of Greek imagination The notion of the Amazons as a unified group appeared as soon as Greek culture be…

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What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
type: item
date: 2025-09-10T08:00:55.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: The wealthy civilisation that dominated the Italian peninsula before the Romans left a legacy that’s full of surprises. Lucy Shipley explains why we have the Etruscans to thank for the way we write, the shape of our towns, Renaissance art – and even horror movies
encoded: They taught us to read and write (well, kind of) Long before the Romans came to dominate the ancient world – before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Claudius invaded Britain and Vesuvius buried Pompeii – another civilisation dominated the Italian peninsula: the Etruscans. You may have heard of them, or that name may mean nothing to you. Either way, there’s little doubting their influence, continuing through the long hegemony of the Romans (who occupied Etruscan settlements) and the medieval period all the way to the modern age. The Etruscans, whose name is echoed in the modern region of Tuscany, emerged in central Italy around 900 BC. Their heartland, Etruria, lay between the rivers Tiber and Arno, and their cities were often perched on imposing plateaus with views across the fertile fields and metal-bearing soils that made their fortune. Their ports sent vessels out into the Tyrrhenian Sea (which bears their Greek name), trading as far afield as Spain and the near east. If you know the Etruscans at all, you might identify them as the villains of many a Roman tale or Greek myth. But who were these people? How did they live? And what impact do they have on our lives today? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-webready150617775-378ec5d.jpg" width="3602" height="2401" alt="A pale green and cream tablet with white letters inscribed across the top" title="An ivory writing tablet discovered in Marsiliana d'Albegna. The characters of the Etruscan alphabet inscribed along the top clearly influenced modern Latin letters (Image by Getty Images)" /> Well, a good place to start is with the words you’re reading on this page. Without the Etruscan alphabet, the Latin characters we use in modern English writing could have developed totally differently. Etruscan letters are clearly influenced by Greek and Phoenician scripts, but you’ll find you can read them with relative ease because the letter forms are so familiar. Read more | The hi…

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The Amazons: wonder-women of the ancient world
type: item
date: 2025-09-05T07:00:54.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: David Braund explains why the Amazons of ancient legend were much more than just women who could fight
encoded: If you know anything about the Amazons of ancient legend, it's probably that they were fearsome female fighters, who bravely battled against male heroes of Greek legend. But, according to Professor David Braund, the Amazons were far more than just formidable warrior women – he explains why to David Musgrove. David Braund is the author of Amazons: The History Behind the Legend (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Buy it now from Amazon

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On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end
type: item
date: 2025-09-04T11:47:28.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Cleopatra persuaded Mark Antony to order the execution of her sister Arsinoe IV on the steps of one of antiquity’s greatest temples, breaking the sacred law of sanctuary and leaving behind a mystery that still unsettles historians today
encoded: At the peak of its glory, the Temple of Artemis towered above the ancient city of Ephesus standing as a vast sanctuary of marble and gold that drew pilgrims from across the Mediterranean. Counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was famed not only for its size and splendour but also for its role as a place of inviolable refuge. Today, the site in modern-day Turkey is hauntingly empty. “People go to Ephesus today and there is pretty much just a single column that’s left standing,” says historian Bettany Hughes, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It’s a bit marshy, it feels a little bit neglected. But what you are looking down on is just the inner sanctuary of this extraordinary temple.” Earthquakes and centuries of decay might have reduced it to crumbled ruins, but in the 1st century BC, the temple was one of the most sacred places in the ancient world – which makes what happened there to Cleopatra’s younger sister, Arsinoe IV, all the more extraordinary. Cleopatra and Arsinoe: a dynasty built on blood The Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt from the death of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC until Cleopatra’s own fall in 30 BC, was notorious for its brutality. Brothers and sisters often married each other in imitation of the ancient pharaohs of a bygone era. But such intimacy didn’t prevent family members from murdering, exiling or poisoning one another to secure power. Read more | The face of Cleopatra: what did she look like, and was she really so beautiful? The Ptolemaic dynasty was infamous for turning siblings into rivals. Cleopatra herself had to fight her own brothers and sisters to secure the throne. Her younger brother Ptolemy XIII initially ruled alongside her, but the two soon fell into open conflict. In 48 BC, Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria while pursuing his enemy Pompey during Rome’s civil war. Drawn into Egypt’s dynastic struggle, he chose to support Cleopatra’s claim. The city erupted into what became known as the Al…

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Would you kidnap a god? This ancient Mesopotamian empire did – and for a genius reason
type: item
date: 2025-08-19T15:41:01.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Historian Selena Wisnom reveals how the ancient Assyrians of Mesopotamia used ‘godnapping’ as a devastating form of psychological warfare
encoded: The military playbook of the ancient Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia was as calculated as it was brutal. Shaped by formidable rulers – among them Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II and Ashurbanipal – Assyrian warfare aimed not only to breach city walls, but to break the will of entire populations. One tactic, in particular, struck at the very heart of enemy morale by dispensing what seemed like cosmic disorder. In a cultural context where divinity was central to daily life across the ancient Mesopotamian civilisations, the Assyrians perfected a method of depriving their enemies of divine protection while claiming that same favour for themselves. Historian Selena Wisnom, an expert on ancient Assyria, calls it “godnapping” – the theft of an enemy’s gods. In practice, that meant seizing the statue of a city’s patron deity – the physical embodiment of the god’s presence – transporting it to the Assyrian capital and holding it under guard. It could be a devastating public statement of Assyrian supremacy and divine endorsement. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast Wisnom describes this as “an offensive on morale”. “Every city has got its own patron god, and if that protector is taken away … that is a disaster because it’s seen as the god abandoning the people.” The Assyrian Empire: masters of conquest The Assyrians were one of the great powers of the ancient Near East. From their heartland in northern Mesopotamia (modern-day northern Iraq), they built an empire with its beginnings in the early second millennium BC, reaching its height in the 9th–7th centuries BC. At its greatest extent, the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c911–609 BC) stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and from Egypt’s borders to the mountains of western Iran. Read more | Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of its most famous stories Their success was built on highly organised armies, formidable siege technology and an intelligence network that kept the king inform…

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