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A Roman Army’s Vulture Mascots: First Banded Birds
by Adrienne Mayor (regular contributor) Vultures were often the first responders to the carnage of war. The great birds of prey could be seen wheeling over battlefields to feast on the dead and dying....
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The Language of God
By Helen King (Regular Contributor) I’m fascinated by the automatic fill-ins which search engines provide. For ‘Am I still…’ ‘Am I still a virgin?’ is a classic, along with ‘Am I still pregnant?’ and...
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White Bread Matter: Sweet Snow, Sour Dough, and Yeasty Froth
By Thomas Parker (regular contributor) Archestratos (4th century BCE) granted supremacy to Lesbos bread as the whitest and most refined: “Now the best to get hold of and the finest of all, cleanly...
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Beans at bedtime? How to dream well
By Helen King (Monthly contributor) V0047952 A sleeping woman is disturbed in her dreamsCredit: Wellcome Library, London. Have you ever tried writing down your dreams? I had a phase of doing this in my...
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Living in interesting times: when history happens
By Helen King (monthly contributor) The old Chinese curse goes ‘May you live in interesting times’. And for those of us in Britain, the times seem to become more ‘interesting’ by the moment. The...
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Poisons and love potions
By Helen King (monthly contributor) V0035920 Circe. Engraving by W. Sharp, 1780, after J. BoydellCredit: Wellcome Library, London.http://wellcomeimages.org Everybody knows that the ancient Greek word...
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Who Keeps Women’s Secrets?
by Helen King (Regular Contributor) First Secret Entrusted to Venus, François Jouffroy (1839) “Do you want to know a secret?” When I was at school, there were various other pupils who would pose this...
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The Metallic Ink of Herculaneum Scrolls
By Keith Houston (Guest Contributor) In January 2015, scientists at the European Radiation Synchrotron Facility in Grenoble, France, announced that they had deciphered handwritten...
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Pandora: the original woman?
By Helen King (Regular Contributor) John William Waterhouse, Pandora (1896) In the beginning, there was – a man. Later, there was also a woman. That’s the basic plot of both the Judaeo-Christian and...
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The Chameleon in the Classroom
By Helen King (Monthly Contributor) This is a story of illness and magic from the fourth century CE. Even though Constantine had converted the Roman Empire to Christianity, paganism didn’t just lie...
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