Murder in the Roman World

Was Sappho queer? Or was this Ancient Greek poet just really really good friends with women?Today on Betwixt the Sheets, Kate is joined by Katherine Horgan to find out how Sappho's poetry has lasted through the centuries, what we can really know about her life, and why she is imp ...  Show more

Where the American War of Independence raged, the camp followers...followed.Among them were sex workers, for both the American and British troops. What was life like inside army camps where sex workers mixed with wives, soldiers and generals? How did race and slavery factor into ...  Show more

In this episode of The Ancients, host Tristan Hughes speaks with historian Honor Cargill-Martin about the notorious Empress Messalina, third wife of Emperor Claudius. A lot has been said about Messalina over two millennia: that she was a nymphomaniac who organised orgies and e ...

We’ve covered bloody battles, we’ve covered stunning cities, we’ve covered civilisations far away from the ancient Mediterranean. But in some 120 episodes of The Ancients we hadn’t covered one of the most popular topics in the world: sex. That is, until now. In today’s episode, s ...  Show more

The legacies of the Ides of March stretch from that very afternoon on March 14th 44BC to the modern day. From Roman times to the Medieval period, from Dante to Shakespeare, and from Brutus to the other infamous assassin he inspired in John Wilkes Booth, the echoes of Julius Ca ...

How do you surface the stories of women in the Roman empire, when the majority of ancient texts were written by men, telling of military victories and losses, or intrigues in the political arena? Speaking to Elinor Evans, Emma Southon chronicles the Roman empire through the stori ...  Show more