Willing migrants? An ancient Mediterranean perspective on forced labour

David Lewis discusses slavery and migration, ancient and modern. Ben Carson – Donald Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development – has recently made yet another remarkable statement about US slavery. Speaking in Washington on March 6th 2017, Carson claimed that slaves travelling to the US in the holds of slave ships were migrants seeking …

A Herculean Achievement: The Twelve Labours of… Vladimir Putin

Esther Eidinow reports on an intriguing use of ancient Greek myth… Herakles, Hercules, Melqart… Putin: a celebration of the Russian leader’s achievements put Greek myth back on the map last week. An exhibition of pictures, organised by a Facebook group of Putin’s supporters, showed the President engaged in Herakles’ different tasks—each repurposed to represent a …

Thinking about Thinking about Ancient Greek Religion (2)

In January 2014, the Ancient Religions and Cognition (ARCog) project held its second workshop: on Transmission. Esther Eidinow gives an overview of the meeting, during which participants explored the theme of religious transmission using cognitive theorizing to think about ancient evidence, and vice versa. You can find out more about the project and the workshop, …

CA report: Classics in Nottingham (2)

Nottingham Teaching Associate Philip Davies and PhD student Peter Davies (no relation) report on the second of two Sparta panels at the recent CA conference. See here for their first report. The second of the two panels on Sparta at the recent Nottingham CA conference expanded our focus beyond the citizen body of Sparta, considering …

CA report: Sparta in Nottingham (1)

Nottingham Teaching Associate Philip Davies and PhD student Peter Davies (no relation) report on the first of two Sparta panels at the recent CA conference. You can now read their second report here. Nottingham recently hosted the Annual Conference of the Classical Association, the biggest Classics and Ancient History gathering in the UK. The conference …