HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history Sun, 18 Oct 2026 14:31:03 GMT en hourly 1 From magic spells to dirty graffiti: 16 surprising facts about sex in the classical world https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-magic-spells-to-dirty-graffiti-16-surprising-facts-about-sex-in-the-classical-world/ Sun, 18 Oct 2026 14:30:53 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-magic-spells-to-dirty-graffiti-16-surprising-facts-about-sex-in-the-classical-world/ Orgies and olive oil. Lucky willies and leather dildos. Polyamory and pigeon-powered love potions. Forget prudish Victorian attitudes towards the ancients, says Dr Jean Menzies, the Greeks and Romans had rich and imaginative sex lives that tell us much about their societies If it were up to the Victorians, we’d all believe the ancient Greeks and Romans were a bunch of sexless prudes, too busy composing poetry even to think about getting down and dirty. And while, yes, they did write a lot of poetry, they certainly made time for sex too – after all, a lot of that poetry was erotic. In short, pleasure and desire were important parts of ancient life.
For centuries, historians and archaeologists, guided by their contemporary social mores, tried to hide the ancients’ interest in sexual matters away from the public gaze. Scholarship concerning the phallic fertility god Priapus was relegated to pornographic magazines. Museums in Britain and Italy banished explicit vase paintings and statues to secret rooms that women and the working classes were forbidden from entering. Trust me when I say that’s a lot of vases and statues.
In recent decades, however, scholars have begun the task of freeing the classical world from the prejudices of the 18th and 19th centuries by asking the question: what did sex really mean to the ancients?
It is too easy, lazy even, to dismiss sex as unimportant when trying to understand the past. History is more than just battles and royal successions. It’s about what happened in day-to-day life and, if you’ll allow me, night-to-night life too, what occurs between the sheets. That’s why I have pulled together some of my favourite facts (and rumours) concerning sex and pleasure in ancient Greece and Rome, in the hopes of pumping up your curiosity in the erotic lives of those who came before.
1. Olive oil was the ultimate all-purpose product
There wasn’t much the Ancient Greeks couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do with olive oil. Not only was it a delicious ingredient, a handy base for perfumes, and an appropriate offering to gods and goddesses, but it also served numerous functions in the bedroom. For one, it was an excellent and readily accessible lubricant. Meanwhile, and more surprising perhaps, the second-century physician Soranus of Ephesus recommended olive oil be used as contraception in his treatise Gynaecology.
(Warning: do not try this at home!)
2. ‘Pussy licker’ was a favourite insult
Unfortunately for many, cunnilingus was frowned upon across the ancient Mediterranean. The Roman poet Martial called it “repugnant”, while the Greek physician Galen described it as akin to eating faeces (On Simple Drugs). This resulted in ‘pussy licker’ becoming a popular way to insult someone, especially men in antiquity. One third-century BC stonemason even went so far as to inscribe the words “Euphiletos, pussy licker” on a brick before firing it. Personally, I like to hope Euphiletos’ partners were very happy with him.
3. Sex was a matter of life and death
According to the Hippocratic Corpus, a body of Greek medical texts attributed to the students of the physician Hippocrates, women needed to have sex, or else they might simply keel over. Their theory was that the womb was not attached to anything else (it is) and that when it got too dry it wandered around the body looking for moisture (it doesn’t). This in turn could lead to a number of health problems. Your womb floats too low? Leg pain. Your womb floats to high? Indigestion. Higher still? Suffocation.
If women had regular sex, however, the resulting wetness made sure their wombs stayed put and such dire consequences were avoided. This belief was so ingrained that a Roman man named Apuleius even stated in court that he married his wife to bring an end to the many illnesses she had suffered since her first husband died. Unfortunately, respectable women were not supposed to have sex outside of marriage even for their health.
4. The ancients loved romance novels too
Love it or hate it, romance is the number one bestseller when it comes to literary genres in the modern world. However, our appetite for love stories is nothing new. During the Roman empire we see the emergence of a new literary form now known as the ‘ancient Greek romance’. These were narratives written in prose that followed the adventures of various fictional lovers. From pirate ships to near-death experiences, these novels were as trope-filled as contemporary stories – and no less entertaining. If you’re curious, I suggest starting with Daphnis and Chloe by Longus (my favourite of the five complete examples that survive).
5. Some believed magic could get you laid
When all else failed it seems, some men and women in antiquity turned to magic to attract a lover. Examples of such ‘attraction’ spells have been preserved on papyri fragments written in Greek but found in Egypt, and dating to the third and fourth centuries. One favourite of mine instructs the spell caster to take the eyes of a bat and insert them into a dog made of dough or wax. They should then attach a label to said dog that includes the name of the one they want to attract, as well as their own name. Finally, they must take their model and leave it where three roads meet. Just in case they later change their mind, they are reminded to make a note of the spot. The outcome of such spells we will sadly never know.
6. Aphrodite was more powerful than any other god
According to such sources as the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess of love was considered by some to be the most powerful of all the ancient Greek deities. Due to her dominion over sex and desire, she was able to influence all living creatures, from animals to mortals and the gods themselves. We even see her fellow gods and goddesses turn to her for assistance on a number of occasions in Greek mythology.
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7. One statue of Aphrodite was just too sexy
In the fourth century BC, the people of Kos commissioned the Greek sculptor Praxiteles create a life-sized statue of Aphrodite. He created two, one of which eschewed tradition by depicting her in the nude. The people of Kos refused the naked statue, considering only the clothed version to be decent. The people of Knidos were not as fussy, and they happily purchased the other statue from the artist. According to the Pseudo-Lucian Erōtes, this turned out to be a great move in terms of tourism, as the nude Aphrodite drew visitors from far and wide.
Unfortunately, not all her visitors were happy simply to observe. One man was even said to have hidden in her temple overnight and, when no-one else was around, attempt intercourse with the statue. In the end, he managed to ejaculate on her thigh leaving a permanent mark on the marble (the mark was probably already there).
8. Birds were sexy?
In his Natural History, the Roman historian and naturalist Pliny the Elder recommended aphrodisiacs specifically for men. These included but were not limited to: an amulet made from the lung of a vulture worn around the neck; a tonic made from the yolk of five pigeon eggs; another amulet, this time containing a cockerel’s right testicle; and sparrow eggs.
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9. Ancient dildos were probably made of leather
We know the ancient Greeks and Romans used dildos. This fact is undisputable. They are depicted in art and described in literature. They may even survive among the archaeological record if objects such as the wooden phallus from Vindolanda are anything to go by. Unfortunately, we’ll never know how common dildos were because many were likely made of a less long-lasting material: leather. Or at least that’s what writers such as Aristophanes and Herodas tell us.
10. Some dildos were double ended
It is not uncommon to find women depicted using dildos on themselves in archaic Greek vases. Yet one vase from the sixth-century BC stands out from the rest. Unlike its fellows, the red-figure cup attributed to the Nikosthenes Painter depicts not only a man using a dildo on a woman, but the dildo in question is doubled ended! If you’d like to look for yourself, it is currently owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
11. Adultery could get you killed
At the end of the first century BC and beginning of the first century AD, new legislation aimed at ‘protecting the family’ – known as the Leges Juliae – was introduced. This included the possibility of exile or death for women who had sex with men other than their husbands. Men, meanwhile, were welcome to have extra-marital sex, so long as it wasn’t with married women. Then they risked similar punishment.
12. The emperor Tiberius loved an orgy
All right, so this is just a rumour, but ancient literature is so full of rumours that I had to include at least one. According to The Lives of the 12 Caesars by the Roman historian Suetonius, the marriage between Julia the Elder, daughter of Augustus, and Tiberius broke down prior to his appointment as emperor. Tiberius abandoned Rome for the island of Capri. Here, he was said to have decorated his villa with erotic art and filled his library with sex manuals, which his guests then used as inspiration during their endless orgies. Julia, meanwhile, was exiled for her extra-marital affairs.
13. Spartan society may have been polyamorous
According to the Greek historian Xenophon, ancient Sparta was said to have practiced “wife-sharing” (The Constitution of the Lacedaemonians). This meant that Spartan men might give other men permission to sleep with their wives so they could procreate. Their reasoning being that if a woman produced healthy sons for one man, she might be able to do so for another – and healthy sons were Sparta’s top priority. The only problem with this information is that none of it comes from Spartan sources, since the Spartans didn’t tend to write things down. We therefore cannot say how common wife-sharing really was – or how Spartan women felt about it.
14. Dirty graffiti was just as common 2,000 years ago
Today you can wander into any public bathroom cubicle, and read a litany of sexual innuendos, declarations of ‘love’, and dirty jokes at your leisure. Don’t be fooled, however, these are no modern invention. Examples of similar graffiti can be found throughout the historical record. The ancient Roman city of Pompeii is a particularly rich source for such material. There, you will find numerous men’s names carved into the walls of different buildings, along with the words “fucked well”. Oh, to have your sexual prowess memorialised for millennia. Some graffito meanwhile is more practical. Take, for example, advice that simply reads “thrust slowly”.
15. The penis was considered lucky
Whether you lived in ancient Greece or Rome you would have been hard pressed not to be familiar with the penis or, at least, its image. The phallus was everywhere in antiquity and for very good reason. It was considered by many to serve an apotropaic function, that is, it could ward off bad luck. Today, such symbols survive in various forms, from jewellery to wall carvings. A miniscule bronze penis was even found by archaeologists as far north as Cumbria, during the excavation of a Roman site in 2026.
16. Sex was not inherently shameful
It is true that there are many caveats to this statement – I’ve discussed a few in this article – but I think it important to make clear that sex for sex’s sake was not considered shameful in the ancient Mediterranean. Prior to the rise of Christianity in ancient Greece and Rome, most people did not consider the purpose of sex to be purely reproductive. So long as it was conducted according to contemporary social mores, sex was deemed a normal, healthy and enjoyable part of life.
Jean Menzies is an author, ancient historian and presenter. Her latest book is Aphrodisia: Women, Sex and Pleasure in the Classical World (Monoray, 2026)
]]> Alexander the Great's empire crumbled into chaos after his death. How did it fall apart so quickly? https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/alexander-the-great-came-close-to-death-no-succession-plan/ Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:49:25 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/alexander-the-great-came-close-to-death-no-succession-plan/ He survived battlefield wounds and conquered an empire stretching from the Mediterranean to India. So when Alexander the Great finally died, why was there no plan for succession? Alexander the Great had repeatedly given his companions reason to fear for his life. He fought at the front of his army, exposing himself to deadly danger. On campaign in what is now Pakistan in 326 BC, an arrow penetrated his chest. He survived.
But in June 323 BC, at the age of 32, his luck finally ended. Alexander died in Babylon, in modern Iraq, after an ambiguous illness that ancient accounts describe as involving a worsening fever. His death plunged his empire into a succession crisis.
“Alexander made no plan to die so young, which seems absurd because he'd come so close to death so many times,” says Edmund Richardson, professor of classics at Durham University and author of Alexander: God, King, Man.
“He'd been stabbed, shot, walloped with rocks, knocked unconscious, had a lung collapse. He'd come close to death an absurd amount of times. But he makes no plan. He names no heir.”
Alexander had created the most impressive empire the world had seen to date but couldn’t secure agreement on who could inherit his authority. So, what happened next?
The rise of Alexander the Great
Alexander became king of Macedon, a kingdom north of the Greek city-states, in 336 BC. Two years later, he crossed into Asia to attack the Persian empire. His campaigns brought Egypt, the Persian heartlands and territories reaching into the Indian subcontinent under his rule. Alexander took over much of Persia’s existing system of provinces, governed by officials known as satraps. But keeping those territories together depended heavily on his personal authority, backed by military success.
“Really almost immediately after his death, his generals, his commanders, start to try to claim power for themselves,” Richardson explains, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “Ambitious provincial governors try to set up little empires of their own.”
Ancient accounts suggest Alexander passed his signet ring, a symbol of royal authority, to his senior commander Perdiccas. But even if this gesture really happened, it certainly didn’t settle who should become king or how the other commanders should be governed. There was no arrangement that everyone recognised as binding. So the immediate problem was finding a royal successor.
Looking to his family, Alexander’s wife Roxane was pregnant when he died. Her child might provide a direct heir, but nobody yet knew whether it would be a boy. Meanwhile, another candidate was already available: Alexander’s adult half-brother Arrhidaeus. Ancient writers describe him as having an intellectual impairment. He possessed the royal ancestry that mattered to Macedonian soldiers but wasn’t deemed able to exercise independent authority.
Alexander’s army fractured along these faultlines. Infantrymen supported Arrhidaeus, while leading officers favoured waiting for Roxane’s child. The eventual compromise produced two kings: Arrhidaeus, who took the royal name Philip III, and, following his birth, Alexander’s son Alexander IV. Perdiccas served as the leading figure in the government acting on their behalf.
But the limitations of this settlement were fundamental.
Could this arrangement hold together?
“This is a deliberately weak setup. Both of those kings are meant to be figureheads, are meant to allow Alexander's generals, his closest friends, the people who'd served with him, to claim power for themselves.”
In fact, Richardson says, “no one who actually takes the throne, or even acts as Alexander's regent, has the power to hold it all together.”
The empire didn’t immediately dissolve into separate kingdoms. Commanders could still claim to serve the royal family while pursuing increasingly independent policies. Some also sought to preserve the empire under their own leadership. One such governor was Ptolemy, a longstanding companion of Alexander who received Egypt in the settlement after his death. Egypt offered considerable wealth and a strong territorial base.
Ptolemy then acquired an ace card that his rivals couldn’t reproduce: Alexander himself.
Alexander the Great’s body
“The plan is to bury Alexnader in Macedon, but Alexander's hearse and the body are hijacked midway along the route by Ptolemy, one of Alexander's childhood friends and then governor of Egypt,” says Richardson.
Ptolemy secured the body and brought it to Egypt, frustrating Perdiccas. The remains were initially buried at Memphis and subsequently housed in Alexandria. The dead king remained a source of prestige and authority, and possession of his remains allowed Ptolemy to associate himself with Alexander’s memory and present himself as its custodian. It also demonstrated the limits of the regent’s power. Perdiccas could claim authority over Alexander’s empire, but wasn’t even able to determine where its founder would be buried.
The seizure formed part of a broader confrontation between the two men. Perdiccas invaded Egypt, attempting to bring Ptolemy under control. His campaign ended disastrously, and cost him his reputation and status. In 321 or 320 BC, officers in his own army murdered him.
On the other hand, Ptolemy had survived the challenge, and within decades became an independent monarch. “After that, the empire fragments,” Richardson says. “It's everyone for themselves.”
The process continued through decades of warfare among the successors, as Alexander’s former commanders are known. The two formal kings proved unable to protect even themselves. Philip III was killed in 317 BC. Alexander IV and Roxane were murdered around 310 BC on the orders of Cassander, the commander who had gained control in Macedon.
Even in death, Alexander the Great left behind enduring cities, dynasties and cultural connections that reshaped the lands of his conquests in the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia permanently. But the political unity he had imposed couldn’t continue without him.
Edmund Richardson was speaking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> Ancient Rome's founding fathers: the extraordinary stories of the city's first kings https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/ancient-romes-founding-fathers-the-extraordinary-stories-of-the-citys-first-kings/ Fri, 09 Oct 2026 13:15:37 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/ancient-romes-founding-fathers-the-extraordinary-stories-of-the-citys-first-kings/ Rome attributed its founding, religious institutions and early political organisation to seven kings. These mythical monarchs may preserve something important about the city’s beginnings According to the ancient Roman tradition, the city of Rome began with a king who was raised by a wolf after being abandoned by the gods. This line of monarchs would end with a ruler remembered chiefly for his arrogance and abuse of power.
Between Romulus – the first mythical king – and Tarquinius Superbus – the last – stood five other kings, each associated with a particular contribution to Roman life. Together, their reigns explained how a settlement beside the River Tiber acquired the institutions of a state that would grow to become the mighty Roman Republic.
But were these men historical figures, or characters created to account for developments whose origins had been forgotten?
Ancient historian Christopher Smith, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, that binary is too restrictive.
“Is it a myth? Is it a legend? Or is it some sort of reflection of reality which isn't correct, but is telling us some quite important truths?”
The problem of the missing centuries
The traditional chronology places Rome’s foundation in 753 BC, in central Italy, long before its armies controlled the Mediterranean.
“In the Roman account, the first king is in the middle of the 8th century BC – that's Romulus – and the last king is expelled from Rome in 509 BC,” Smith explains.
But there is a huge distance between those supposed events and the historians who described them.
“The first Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, does not write until 200 BC. And I've just been talking about the period from 750 to 500 BC. So, there's a gap.”
Writing around the end of the third century BC, Pictor looked back roughly three centuries to the monarchy’s traditional end, and more than five to its beginning. And to further complicate the picture, his history survives only in fragments and references by later authors.
Smith contrasts this with Greek historians who could investigate events within living memory. Thucydides, for example, participated in the fifth-century BC war between Athens and Sparta that became the subject of his work.
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Roman accounts of the kings had no comparable proximity. The fullest surviving narratives, including Livy’s history, were written later still. Nevertheless, the royal sequence has a recognisable structure.
The first three Roman kings?
“Romulus is number one,” Smith says. “He has a miraculous birth, gets rid of his twin, takes over, and he founds a lot of the military and political apparatus of Rome.”
In the familiar legend, Romulus and Remus are abandoned twins who survive through the intervention of a she-wolf, who they suckle from. Their eventual dispute leaves Remus dead and Romulus the founder of the new city. The story associates Rome’s beginnings with both political creation and violence. But a functioning community requires more than a founder and an army.
“So the next king, Numa Pompilius, comes in and he teaches the Romans about religion,” Smith explains. “So you've got statecraft with Romulus. You've then got religion with Numa Pompilius.”
Religion here meant public responsibilities as well as personal belief: priesthoods, ceremonies and the correct relationship between the community and its gods.
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The third king, Tullus Hostilius, shifts attention back towards conflict.
“Tullus Hostilius is predominantly associated with military activity and the conquest of territory.”
Read in sequence, these reigns give separate – but, crucially, intertwined – identities to processes that any growing city might experience: establishing authority, organising worship and extending control over its neighbours. Whether those processes actually belonged to three identifiable rulers – or whether those rulers are symbolic personifications of those processes – is another question.
Outsiders and a changing city
The fourth king, Ancus Marcius, combines qualities assigned to his predecessors.
“He's quite pious, he looks after military affairs. He's quite sane and stable,” Smith says.
Then the narrative introduces an outsider: Tarquinius Priscus, also called Tarquin the Elder.
“He comes from Etruria, north of the Tiber River. He's a new person to arrive, and he is a builder. There's an awful lot of building work that happens under his reign.”
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Etruria lay principally in what is now Tuscany, Umbria and northern Lazio. Its cities belonged to a prosperous society with extensive Mediterranean connections, skilled craftspeople and monumental religious buildings. Rome developed alongside this influential neighbour.
Tarquin’s foreign origin therefore raises useful historical questions. Could the story reflect the movement of powerful families between cities, or Rome’s absorption of outside skills and leadership? Either way, Tarquin’s role in this mythology presents the city’s development as something involving newcomers, rather than an entirely self-contained achievement.
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Reform followed by tyranny
Servius Tullius, the sixth king “seems another kind of intruder into the story,” Smith explains. “He's not related to anybody, but he turns out to be one of the most inventive kings.”
The tradition credits him with reorganising the population and its civic obligations.
“So he resets the constitution. Allegedly, he does a whole load of founding [of institutions]. He reorganises the city.” The constitution, here, refers to arrangements governing political participation and public duties, rather than a single written document. Reforms attributed to Servius connected wealth, military service and citizens’ place within the state.
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The final king provides the narrative’s reversal. Tarquinius Superbus removes Servius and takes power, before being expelled himself.
“Clue's in the name: ‘Superbus’, meaning proud,” Smith observes.
His overthrow explains the emergence of the republic: government through public offices rather than kingship. The sequence thus accounts for both the creation of royal authority and the justification for ending it. But how much of this story is actually true?
What the buildings can tell us
Archaeology offers an independent way to examine the setting of these stories.
On Rome’s Capitoline Hill, substantial foundations survive from the sixth-century BC Temple of Jupiter, a sanctuary also dedicated to Juno and Minerva. Roman tradition associated its construction with the Tarquins. A project of this size required resources, labour and coordination. It supports the picture of an early Rome capable of major collective building.
But it doesn’t independently verify who commissioned it. That is where Smith locates the “middle ground” between fact and mythology.
Even if these traditions didn’t stem from individual kings, we can still infer some things about the societies that produced them. Their stories may combine inherited memories, explanations of existing institutions and later judgements about good and bad government.
“What’s exciting about the Roman king narrative,” Smith concludes, “is that it distils an awful lot that's going on in an archaic society into a narrative form.” And that narrative form is “a really important way in which the Romans told a story: their origin, their expansion, and how power worked”.
Christopher Smith was speaking to Emily Briffett on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> Was Alexander the Great addicted to sex? The truth about the conqueror's love life https://www.historyextra.com/membership/alexander-the-great-relationships-marriages-hephaestion/ Sun, 20 Sep 2026 10:50:09 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/alexander-the-great-relationships-marriages-hephaestion/ Alexander’s wives and lovers connected him to powerful families across his empire. But amid competing dynasties and potential heirs, his closest attachment may have been to the companion whose death left him devastated In 324 BC, Alexander the Great lost the man who had accompanied him through much of his extraordinary life.
Hephaestion died after falling ill at Ecbatana, in what is now western Iran. The ancient historian Arrian describes how, overwhelmed by grief, Alexander fell into a state of dismay. He refused food, neglected himself, and lay immobilised by mourning. Orders for public grief carried a private bereavement across his empire. Arrian’s account acknowledges disagreements over the details, but insists that the intensity of Alexander’s sorrow was beyond dispute.
For Edmund Richardson, professor of classics at Durham University and author of Alexander: God, King, Man, this was the defining attachment within an exceptionally complicated personal life.
“Really the closest relationship of his life was with his childhood friend Hephaestion,” he explains, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
But Alexander also had wives, other female lovers and children.
How did this all mesh together?
A king with many families
Born in 356 BC, Alexander grew up in Macedonia, a kingdom centred in what is now northern Greece. His father, Philip II, transformed it into a formidable military power. When Philip was assassinated in 336 BC, Alexander inherited the throne aged 20.
He also inherited an example of royal marriage in which one wife did not necessarily replace another.
“Like his father, Philip II, Alexander is cheerfully polygamous,” says Richardson. “He has one of the most complicated and elaborate collections of sexual partners in history.”
For a Macedonian king, marriage was an important political tool that could connect different aristocratic families to the throne, secure alliances and produce potential heirs. But each additional family also introduced competing interests. A child might give its mother and her relatives greater influence; another marriage could threaten their standing.
Richardson describes “multiple children, multiple families, multiple power bases; everyone looking over their shoulders and everyone trying to get Alexander's attention”.
This helps explain why questions about Alexander’s sexuality and sexual identity produce an incomplete picture. Modern identity categories do not map neatly onto his world. Marriage to women and fatherhood, alongside intimacy with men, were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Barsine and a connection to childhood
Alexander’s invasion of the Persian empire in 334 BC brought him into contact with families whose influence stretched far beyond Macedonia. Among them was Barsine, daughter of the Persian aristocrat Artabazus. Her connection to Alexander, however, apparently began much earlier.
She was someone “who Alexander actually knew from his childhood because she was in exile at the Macedonian court while he was growing up”, Richardson explains, “and whom he seems to have been exceedingly smitten with”.
The relationship linked Alexander’s upbringing to the world he was conquering. Barsine belonged to a Persian elite familiar with Greek culture; she had also been married to Memnon, a Greek commander who served Persia.
According to Plutarch’s account, she was captured at Damascus after Alexander’s victory at Issus in 333 BC. He describes her education and distinguished ancestry as attractions, alongside encouragement from Alexander’s general Parmenion.
“With Barsine, he had a son called Heracles,” Richardson says. Heracles appears in ancient accounts as Alexander’s son, although historians have questioned the certainty of that paternity. Barsine herself is generally distinguished from Alexander’s formally acknowledged wives.
Later, in 327 BC, Alexander married Roxana, whom Richardson describes as “the aristocrat from the East”.
She was the daughter of Oxyartes, a nobleman associated with Bactria, a region encompassing parts of modern Afghanistan and neighbouring Central Asia. Alexander had pushed far beyond Persia’s western territories, encountering determined resistance as he attempted to consolidate his conquests.
Ancient accounts present him as captivated by Roxana. The marriage also connected him to a prominent local family in a difficult region.
A wedding to join together empires
By 324 BC, Alexander had defeated Darius III, Persia’s last reigning Achaemenid king, and extended his campaigns into the Indian subcontinent.
At Susa, in modern Iran, he staged marriages joining his Macedonian companions to women from the Persian elite. Alexander married Stateira, Darius’s daughter. Arrian also records his marriage to Parysatis, daughter of an earlier Persian king, Artaxerxes III. Roxana remained his wife. These new marriages added royal connections rather than replacing an existing household, but in effect Alexander was binding himself to the dynasty whose empire he had conquered.
Hephaestion, meanwhile, married Stateira’s sister Drypetis. Arrian explains that Alexander wanted their children to be cousins. Even the arrangements for future generations drew his closest companion into his family.
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But producing possible successors was different from securing a succession.
“With Roxana, he had a son called Alexander, Alexander IV,” Richardson says. That child was born after his father’s death in Babylon in June 323 BC. Richardson also considers it probable that Stateira was pregnant when Alexander died. Her pregnancy remains an uncertainty, but her royal ancestry made her a potential centre of opposition.
So, according to the tradition preserved by Plutarch, Roxana arranged Stateira’s murder with the assistance of Perdiccas, one of Alexander’s commanders.
The death of Hephaestion
For all these dynastic calculations, Richardson places Hephaestion at the emotional centre of Alexander’s life.
“Alexander and Hephaestion were friends, were companions, were sometimes lovers.”
That last description is Richardson’s interpretation of a relationship whose precise sexual nature remains debated. The surviving evidence establishes exceptional closeness more securely than it documents what happened privately between them.
Hephaestion was also a senior commander. Their bond encompassed shared experience, military responsibility and political trust, alongside the intimacy Richardson identifies.
“And Hephaestion's death, less than a year Alexander's own, absolutely broke him,” he says. “It was grief that he just simply never recovered from.”
Alexander could accumulate territories, titles, wives, children, and royal connections. None supplied a replacement for the companion he had lost.
Edmund Richardson was speaking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> Zenobia: The queen who challenged the Roman empire https://www.historyextra.com/membership/zenobia-the-queen-who-challenged-the-roman-empire/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:18:55 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/zenobia-the-queen-who-challenged-the-roman-empire/ In the sixth episode of History's Greatest Leaders, historian and author Shushma Malik talks to entrepreneur and author Mike Soutar about the remarkable story of a forgotten female leader She may not be well known to us today, but Zenobia – who was queen of what’s now Syria in the third century BC – definitely deserves to be. That’s because she took on the might of the Roman empire and, for a short time at least, emerged victorious.
So how did she succeed where so many others failed? Was she a skilled leader, or merely an opportunist taking advantage of her opponent’s weakened circumstances?
In this episode, historian and author Shushma Malik talks to Mike Soutar about the remarkable story of this forgotten female leader – and whether her eventual downfall can offer any lessons about the dangers of aiming too high.
Watch below or listen to the full interview, ad-free:
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]]> The ancient Mesopotamians were freakishly ahead of their time – and here are 8 reasons why https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ancient-mesopotamians-were-freakishly-ahead-of-their-time-and-here-are-8-reasons-why/ Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:00:31 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ancient-mesopotamians-were-freakishly-ahead-of-their-time-and-here-are-8-reasons-why/ Ideas developed by ancient peoples in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers still shape our lives today. Selena Wisnom explains why we should celebrate the pivotal roles they played in the development of beer, writing, AI, horoscopes – and even credit cards 1. Writing
They gave us the means to pen novels – and official records
The ancient peoples of the so-called ‘cradle of civilisation’ – the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – grew up fast. In the five or so millennia BC, four major civilisations emerged in the region known as Mesopotamia – and the advances they made would leave an indelible imprint on history.
From around 4000 BC, Sumerians built the first city-states in the region’s south. The next great power was the Akkadian empire, founded about 2334 BC. In the early 19th century BC, the Babylonians became the dominant force in southern Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, to the north, from the 21st century BC, the Assyrians conquered much of west Asia.
Mesopotamia was a place of rich soils and access to plentiful water for irrigating crops. Unsurprisingly, it’s believed to be where settled farming emerged. Its inhabitants grew rich, with elites enjoying time to think and to develop ways of preserving their best ideas – most notably writing.
Around 3500 BC, Sumerian accountants in the city of Uruk devised a method for keeping track of the rations they gave to their workers – and developed the most advanced bureaucracy the world had yet seen. Writing started here as a system of pictures, known today as proto-cuneiform, which could record any commodity going in or out. Delivered three jars of oil to the temple? Just draw a jar of oil three times.
Proper writing, which can record abstract ideas and the sounds of speech, evolved by about 3100 BC. At this point, pictures were used to spell out the sounds of the objects for which they stood; to provide an analogy in English, drawing a bee and a leaf might spell the word ‘belief’. This writing system, known as cuneiform (from the Latin for ‘wedge’), involved pressing a reed stylus into soft clay tablets, combining multiple wedge-shaped marks to create pictures. Over time, these became more abstract and less like things they originally depicted. So by the first millennium BC, you’d never guess that the sign ‘ni’ was originally supposed to be a jar of oil.
Cuneiform was still being written on clay tablets in the Middle East in the first century AD, some 3,100 years after the system was first devised – a period spanning well over half of recorded human history.
Such tablets don’t decay in the ground, and they’re not destroyed by fire, so around half a million of them survive today, with more surfacing in excavations all the time. As a result, Mesopotamia is one of the best-documented parts of the ancient world, helping us learn about its extraordinary innovations.
2. Banking
They invented spreadsheets, credit and interest payments
Alongside those early accounting systems, the Mesopotamians developed the world’s first spreadsheets, as well as sophisticated banking systems. They also invented the concept of credit – and, with it, interest-bearing loans.
As early as the third millennium BC, grid-like tablets recorded loans of grain from the palace to the temple, enabling lenders to keep tabs on how much was repaid and what was still owed. A series of surviving tablets detail how the royal granaries of Lagash – a city-state sited between the sites of modern Baghdad and Basra – supplied the White Temple, which failed to repay the full amount of grain the following year, necessitating the recording of a deficit on the loan.
Temples functioned as banks, lending silver and barley at discounted rates in times of need. They also financed commercial ventures, charging annual interest at 33 per cent on barley.
The private sector took off in the early second millennium BC, with fully fledged private enterprises in which people could invest. Assyrian merchants organised trading partnerships to finance their trips to Anatolia, where they sold textiles made by their wives at home. Traders were keen to invest their profits and not let their silver lie idle. Precious metals sitting in the money bag rather than being put to work increasing their value were described as ‘getting hungry’.
The Babylonian word for interest, which translates as ‘increase’, originally referred to herds of animals. Just as the flocks would reproduce and multiply over time, money and debt could also burgeon. Given the huge interest rates levied by lenders, profits could grow quickly. But so could debts – and ordinary people who found themselves unable to repay their creditors were sometimes enslaved. In the second millennium BC, Babylonian kings frequently had to proclaim debt amnesties to provide relief.
National deficits also caused problems. The first documented war in history, between the Sumerian cities of Lagash and Umma, a little to the north-west, flared up over a refusal to repay a loan. The conflict, which dragged on for 150 years (c2500–2350 BC), was a convoluted tale of claim, counterclaim, and battles won and lost – all over a dispute over a loan agreement based on a rich strip of fertile territory, the Gu’edena or ‘edge of the plain’.
So you can thank the Mesopotamians for your credit card – and also be grateful that interest rates have, by and large, fallen in the past 4,000 years.
- Read more | He tried to conquer knowledge itself – instead this ancient Mesopotamian king resorted to rule with terror
3. Pubs
They adored beer, and created venues to drink it
People have probably been quaffing beer for at least 12,000 years, but the earliest-known written evidence for brewing comes from Mesopotamia. Indeed, some of the very first surviving examples of writing were made by temple accountants working out how much grain they needed to make enough beer for festivals.
The Sumerians adored beer. One list, albeit compiled later as a lexical teaching aid, records 38 different types including dark, light, red and “triple beer”, plus beer with and without foam – and the enigmatic “beer in the middle of the sea”. That’s enough varieties to make any modern craft brewery proud.
Drinking beer was a highly social activity. People gathered around a communal vat and sipped through reed straws. Such a scene is depicted on cylinder seals belonging to Queen Puabi of Ur in the 26th century BC, who was later buried with a gold and lapis lazuli drinking straw. Straws were perhaps used to penetrate a floating layer of residue, or simply to enhance the fun of sharing a drink with others.
Mesopotamians built the first pubs, too. One tavern in Lagash, established c2700 BC, had a kitchen, an outdoor seating area and 150 serving dishes as well as the all-important beer.
It’s often assumed that early beer was low in alcohol, mainly because it was given to children. But there is plenty of evidence that Sumerian beer was highly intoxicating. One myth tells of Inanna, goddess of war, love and sex, getting the god Enki (or Ea) drunk so that she can steal from him the powers of civilisation.
Later medical recipes contain cures for hangovers and even alcoholism. And one of the texts that gives us our most detailed information about brewing – the Sumerian hymn to the goddess Ninkasi – might have been taught to school children in the second millennium BC, along with a drinking song that has become famous via YouTube: As I spin around the lake of beer, while feeling wonderful, feeling wonderful, while drinking beer, in a blissful mood, while drinking alcohol and feeling exhilarated, with joy in the heart and a contented liver – my heart is a heart filled with joy!
4. Maths
They had plenty of time for numbers and calculations
Whenever you check a clock to tell the time, you are using a Mesopotamian system of counting – sexagesimal. Our modern decimal system uses the number 10 as the base, but the Mesopotamians used base 60 – which is why we have 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. It was also the Mesopotamians who decided that a circle should be divided into 360°; that’s neatly divisible by 60, and explains why it makes sense for clocks to have circular faces (though ancient Mesopotamians used water clocks).
Unlike us, they counted lots of other things in 60s, a fact reflected in the Mesopotamian system of writing numbers. One vertical wedge could stand for 1, 60 or even 360 (6x60). You can tell which number is indicated only from the context which does make Mesopotamian maths a bit of a headache.
And these people were extremely good at maths. Babylonian schoolchildren were learning a version of Pythagoras’ theorem more than 1,000 years before the Greek polymath triangulated his thinking in the sixth century BC. As early as the 18th century BC, they also knew the square root of two, needed to find the diagonal of a square.
Babylonian students were taught methods of calculating areas of land so that they could be taxed efficiently. However – and seemingly just for the fun of it – teachers used some huge numbers when setting exercises. Later, the Babylonians came up with sophisticated maths that was key to the development of data science.
- Read more | Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of its most famous stories
5. Poetry
They gave us gloomy introverts who ponder life
It wasn’t all admin in Mesopotamia. The region produced the world’s first literature, too, in all sorts of genres. The earliest named author in Mesopotamia – and, therefore, the first known writer in history – was Enheduanna, a priestess of the moon god in the city of Ur, who lived around 2300 BC.
Known as “the Sumerian Shakespeare”, Enheduanna wrote wonderful poems about a turbulent world governed by capricious gods – classics that were still being studied in schools five centuries after she died.
A snippet from Exaltation of Inanna gives a flavour of her verse:
I approached the light but it burned me
I approached the shade but was covered by a storm
My honeyed mouth turned to spittle
My talent for lifting spirits has turned to dust
The Mesopotamians were also great storytellers. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh – dating back to at least the 18th century BC – charts the fate of a king on a quest for eternal life. It’s the earliest known example of the ‘hero’s journey’ that underpins so many of today’s Hollywood films. Babylonian stories about struggles between gods and heroes influenced the Homeric epics, Greek mythology and even the Bible: does a flood wiping out humanity and an ark that boards animals two by two sound familiar?
But it wasn’t all serious. The Sumerians wrote the first rap battles – debate poems between entities such as Summer and Winter, Bird and Fish, and Date Palm and Tamarisk, arguing over who deserves the crown.
Similar slanging matches also took place between people. A recently discovered text from c1740 BC describes a cat fight between two women from the city of Nippur. They accuse each other of being bad at baking and of buying ready-made food, hurling insults – “Your butt sticks out” – and accusations: “You can’t even operate a spindle.”
Poems about the goddess Inanna describe the first instance of teenage rebellion, recounting how she sneaked out to meet her boyfriend without telling her parents. And some of the earliest jokes are written in Sumerian. One starts: “A dog walks into a bar and says ‘I can’t see a thing – I’ll open this one’!” The punchline, we can only assume, has been lost in translation.
6. Astrology
They read the stars and created zodiacal archetypes
Whether you’re a feisty Leo or a cool-headed Capricorn – indeed, whatever your star sign – you can thank the Babylonians for inventing it. Astrology was practised in Mesopotamia by at least the third millennium BC, when the stars and planets were thought to carry messages from the gods to the king. An eclipse usually meant that a king would soon die, whereas the rising and setting of Venus could portend a good harvest, reconciliation of kings, or even war.
None of these outcomes was inevitable, though. Rituals could be performed to ask the gods to change their minds, or for help interpreting these astral signs: if a king will die, which king will it be? One surviving prayer to the moon god worries over “the evil of a lunar eclipse” and “portents and omens, unpleasant and unfavourable” as it pleads for intercession and the hope of a more “favourable” path.
In the fifth century BC, Babylonian priests divided the sky into 12 equal chunks that we now call the zodiac. The Persians who ruled Babylon at that time had no interest in taking advice from the Babylonian gods, so astrologers started taking private clients – and invented horoscopes. These forecast the future based on a person’s date of birth and the exact positions of the planets, making predictions such as: “His days will be long” and “He will have sons”.
The names of most modern star signs are direct translations into Latin of the Babylon constellations: Libra is a pair of scales, Cancer is a crab and Taurus is the Babylonian bull of heaven who, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes down from the sky to trample the land. Others took their classical names from Babylonian images – Aquarius the water carrier is depicted in the same way as the water god Ea (or Enki), often shown with water pouring from his shoulders. Meanwhile, Virgo the maiden was named after a Babylonian picture of a woman holding an ear of wheat (this constellation was ‘the Furrow’ in Babylonian).
- Read more | Behold his nightmarish nether regions: this ancient Mesopotamian demon was secretly a divine hero
7. Data science
They laid the foundations for modern machine learning
Without the Babylonians, we would have no artificial intelligence – because they invented the algorithm. The roots of data science lie in astrology: the original purpose of the zodiac was to measure the sky more accurately. Babylonian astronomers measured the position of a star or planet by holding up hands to the sky: 12 fingers corresponded to an angle of 1°. They studied the heavens each night, recording observations in diaries maintained for at least 600 years – arguably the longest scientific project in history.
With such a huge amount of data, they quickly spotted patterns. For instance, Venus moves in an eight-year cycle, so they could work out that planet’s position on a future date by simply checking their records to see where it had been recorded eight years before then. Eventually, astronomers developed mathematical formulae to calculate the positions of celestial bodies without having to consult past records – and the algorithm was born.
The Greeks picked up these data and calculations along with the zodiac, and they became part of Greek science. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy used Babylonian eclipse records dating back to 747 BC. Modern mathematical astronomy, directly descended from that Greek work, exists only because of astrology – ancient scholars carefully observing the sky for messages from the angry gods. So the algorithm, along with the idea that trends can be extrapolated from data, comes from a core principle of Mesopotamian religion – the idea that the gods write messages in the heavens for humans to interpret.
8. Medicine
They performed surgery and introduced the system of striking off dodgy doctors
The Egyptians usually get the credit for producing the earliest known medical texts – but the Mesopotamians were first. The oldest medical recipe, for making a salve to heal a bite wound, dates from the third millennium BC in Ebla, Syria.
The code of Hammurabi, which covered 282 legal scenarios – including disputes – attests that the Babylonians were performing eye surgery in the 18th century BC. These laws, which survive on a stele topped with a relief image of Hammurabi with Shamash – who worked double time as the sun god and the god of justice – mandated harsh penalties for medical malpractice. If an operation went wrong and the patient was blinded, the physician’s hand should be cut off – a hand for an eye, as it were. It was also stated that doctors should charge rates on a sliding scale based on the social class of the patient. Ordinary people paid half as much as the wealthy.
Mesopotamian medicine was fundamentally holistic. A physician would give you drugs to treat symptoms, but an exorcist would also be called to fix the root problem, understood to have involved angering the gods. Incantations at the bedside would reassure a patient that the gods would soon calm down, while omens could tell the exorcist whether the patient would live or die even before that spirit-expeller arrived at the sufferer’s house. If, for example, he saw a potsherd standing up in the street, a patient was clearly too dangerously ill to go near.
In the seventh century BC, Assyrian king Ashurbanipal commissioned an encyclopaedia to collect and standardise the vast numbers of medical texts and traditions that were circulating by then. These included treatments for everything from minor ailments, such as headaches and digestive problems, to serious problems such as mental illness and epilepsy – known to the Babylonians as ‘fallen from the sky’.
To treat a headache, you should mix a selection of seeds then “boil down [the mixture] in vinegar, sprinkle parched grain flour [and] emmer flour on it, and smear [the mixture] onto a piece of leather. Shave his head [and] put it on as a bandage; he will get better.”
Hippocrates is usually credited with inventing the concept of diagnosis based on observation, but the Mesopotamians pioneered this approach hundreds of years earlier, considering five grades of temperature variation, among many other factors. Their knowledge was then incorporated into Hippocratic writings, Roman treatises on eye disease and, later, Arabic medicine.
Mesopotamian advances travelled widely thanks to the cosmopolitan nature of the ancient world. To the east, Sumerians had been trading goods and ideas with the Indus Valley and Afghanistan as early as the third millennium BC, while in the other direction Alexander the Great united lands from Babylon to Greece under one rule. Whether via commerce or conquest, people moved – and took their cultures with them. And Mesopotamian expertise survived and spread because successive cultures found it to be practical, useful and effective.
Selena Wisnom is lecturer in the heritage of the Middle East at the University of Leicester. She is the author of The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History (Allen Lane, 2025)
This article was first published in the September 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> Have we got ancient women's sexuality all wrong? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/have-we-got-ancient-womens-sexuality-all-wrong/ Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:34:07 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/have-we-got-ancient-womens-sexuality-all-wrong/ Jean Menzies explains how women expressed, and pursued, sexual fulfilment in the classical world You might assume that women were prevented from pursuing sexual pleasure in the classical world. However, as Dr Jean Menzies discusses with Lauren Good, this is not the case. They explore how women were active in pursuing and expressing sexual fulfilment, from erotic magic to some particularly graphic graffiti in Pompeii.
Please note that this episode features discussion of some adult topics.
]]> Alexander the Great died aged just 32 – but where had he been planning to conquer next? https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/how-did-alexander-the-great-die-where-was-he-planning-to-conquer-next/ Thu, 20 Aug 2026 09:31:53 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/how-did-alexander-the-great-die-where-was-he-planning-to-conquer-next/ When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, he was preparing ships, armies and supply networks for a new phase of expansion. By the summer of 323 BC, Alexander the Great had achieved what no conqueror before him had managed.
In little more than a decade, he had transformed himself from the young king of Macedonia into ruler of the largest empire the ancient world had seen, stretching from Greece and Egypt across the former Persian Empire into what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, encompassing dozens of peoples, languages and cultures.
He had defeated the Persian king Darius III in a succession of spectacular battles, crossed deserts and mountain ranges thought almost impassable, founded cities across Asia and marched farther east than any Greek army had gone before.
He was also only 32 years old, and not inclined to rest on his laurels, or contemplate an early retirement. Around him, the machinery of conquest was beginning to turn again. The surviving evidence suggests that Alexander was preparing another enormous campaign of further expansion. It never materialised.
Over roughly two weeks, Alexander developed a fever. Gradually, he weakened. Eventually, he could no longer speak or move. He died in Babylon in June 323 BC.
How did Alexander the Great die?
“The stories of Alexander the Great’s death are brilliant,” says historian Edmund Richardson, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “And each one is more implausible than the last.”
Alexander spent his final weeks in Babylon. Situated on the river Euphrates, in what is now Iraq, Babylon had been a centre of power and culture for more than a thousand years. Even after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to Persia, it remained one of the richest and most impressive cities in the Near East.
For Alexander, this was an obvious imperial base. Babylon lay close to the geographical centre of his vast empire. It possessed excellent communications with both east and west, and it offered access to the Persian Gulf through the Euphrates river system.
It would also be the place he died.
Ancient accounts of Alexander’s illness differ in detail, but broadly agree on some things. After attending a banquet and drinking heavily, he developed a fever. At first, he continued issuing military orders. As the illness worsened, however, he became increasingly debilitated. He lost the ability to speak, and to move. Then, he died.
Later proposals suggested that he “possibly drank himself to death,” Richardson says. “Possibly he contracted some kind of illness – perhaps malaria or some other disease. Or possibly he was poisoned.”
This last idea proved to be a persuasive one.
“The stories about his poisoning are many and varied,” Richardson explains. “They’re often told after his death by his successors in order to damage the reputations of their rivals or attack people whose power they hoped to take.”
“There are even stories of a lead-lined vessel borne secretly from Macedon containing a poison that would destroy anything,” Richardson says.
“It's all bunkum, I’m afraid.”
Could an ancient poison have killed him?
“The ancient world had many poisons, of course, and one of them could plausibly have been administered to Alexander,” Richardson says. “But it had no poisons that worked in the way Alexander’s final illness unfolded. A very slow-acting poison that gradually killed him over the course of two weeks simply didn’t exist.”
Instead, Richardson argues that infectious disease remains by far the most convincing explanation.
“It's almost certain that he died of typhoid, caused by contamination in Babylon’s water supply.”
Babylon possessed one of the most sophisticated water-management systems in the ancient world. Canals irrigated surrounding farmland, controlled seasonal flooding and supplied the city. Maintaining these systems had been a central concern of Mesopotamian rulers for centuries, says Richardson, because “the Code of Hammurabi, one of Babylon’s earliest law codes, set out incredibly detailed rules about drinking water and keeping it clean.”
The Code of Hammurabi was issued by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the 18th century BC – more than 1,400 years before Alexander arrived. Its provisions show how seriously Mesopotamian rulers regarded the maintenance of their water supplies.
- Read more | He tried to conquer knowledge itself – instead this ancient Mesopotamian king resorted to rule with terror
So how could it be this carefully-managed water that killed Alexander?
When he came to Babylon, Alexander travelled with tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, engineers, servants, craftsmen, merchants and camp followers, accompanied by horses, mules, camels, donkeys and even elephants acquired during his Indian campaigns.
“When Alexander arrived in Babylon for the last time, the route his army took meant that almost the entire force camped upstream from the city, close to the banks of the Euphrates,” Richardson says.
“Unfortunately, that meant tens of thousands of men were drinking, washing, urinating, and so on into the river over the course of several weeks and months. Not just men, either – donkeys, horses, elephants, everything.”
“We ran some computer modelling for the book to see what would have happened, and what was found was that the water in Babylon would have become incredibly toxic over the course of a couple of weeks – full of salmonella, full of E. coli, and particularly full of the bacteria that causes typhoid.”
Typhoid fever, caused by Salmonella Typhi, spreads through food and water contaminated by excrement. Its symptoms include prolonged fever, exhaustion, abdominal pain and, in severe untreated cases, delirium, intestinal complications and death. Whatever the exact diagnosis, Alexander’s death was sudden in political terms. He left no clear adult heir, no agreed succession plan and no institution capable of replacing his personal authority.
He did, however, leave signs of another extraordinary campaign.
What was Alexander planning before he died?
Alexander’s future plans survive only in fragments preserved by later ancient writers. Some are almost certainly exaggerated. Others may reflect genuine projects interrupted by his death. Disentangling the two requires careful, cautious discernment, but as Richardson says, “some are more plausible than others, but many, I think, contain a grain of truth.”
The strongest evidence points towards a major maritime expedition, with his first target being Arabia. “We know a whole new fleet was being built to take the army around the Arabian Peninsula and then north up the Arabian coast to the Red Sea ports of Egypt,” Richardson says.
Although Alexander had conquered the Persian Empire, the Arabian Peninsula remained largely outside his control. Arabian merchants controlled valuable trade routes carrying incense, frankincense, myrrh and other luxury goods between southern Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the wider Mediterranean. Control of the peninsula would also strengthen communications between Egypt and the eastern provinces of Alexander’s empire.
This would have been an immense logistical undertaking.
Alexander had already demonstrated remarkable skill in combined land and naval operations, especially during the siege of Tyre and his campaigns along the eastern Mediterranean coast. Circumnavigating Arabia, however, would have required fleets capable of operating for months while coordinating with armies moving through difficult terrain.
Once the expedition reached Egypt, the next stage seemed to be further Mediterranean expansion.
“One of his generals, one of his most trusted commanders, Craterus, had been sent west towards Macedon,” he says. “Along the way, though, his instructions were to build a series of dockyards and giant ships on the Mediterranean coast.”
This suggests preparation for another major naval operation.
“Carthage was one possible target,” Richardson says. “Southern Italy is another.”
Was Alexander preparing to attack Carthage?
Few states could rival Carthage in wealth or maritime power. Founded by Phoenician settlers from Tyre, Carthage dominated much of the western Mediterranean through a commercial empire stretching across North Africa, Sardinia, Sicily and southern Spain.
Alexander had already destroyed Tyre after one of antiquity’s most remarkable sieges in 332 BC. An invasion of Carthage might therefore have seemed logical as an extension of his campaigns against Phoenician power.
- Read more | 2,200 years ago Rome got caught in the Thucydides Trap. The result transformed the ancient world
Such a war would have been very different from his earlier victories over Persia.
Carthage fought primarily through naval strength, overseas commerce and hired armies. Alexander would have needed a major fleet to challenge it successfully. The dockyards and ships apparently under construction therefore fit strikingly well with such an ambition.
Could Alexander have invaded Italy?
Another possibility is southern Italy.
The region known as Magna Graecia contained numerous wealthy Greek colonies founded centuries before Alexander’s birth. These cities shared language, religion and many cultural traditions with mainland Greece. They also lay increasingly close to the expanding power of Rome.
In 323 BC, Rome was still primarily an Italian state. Its great Mediterranean empire lay centuries in the future. Even so, it was growing rapidly through conquest and alliances across the peninsula.
A western campaign might therefore have brought Alexander into contact – and perhaps conflict – with the future masters of the Mediterranean.
Could Alexander have defeated Rome?
“The possibilities of what might have happened if that expedition had gone ahead have fascinated historians for centuries,” Richardson says.
“Roman historians, in particular, spent a great deal of time wondering what would have happened if Alexander had reached southern Italy with his new armies and all the resources of his empire, and what a war between Alexander and Rome might have looked like.”
“But none of those plans came to fruition,” Richardson says, “because Alexander died very suddenly in Babylon at the age of 32.”
Alexander left no recognised adult successor. Within months, Alexander’s generals began dividing territories among themselves.
The resulting Wars of the Successors lasted for decades. Instead of one empire, the ancient world acquired several powerful Hellenistic kingdoms, each growing from the influence of Alexander the Great.
Edmund Richardson was speaking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> What is 'Zeus's Law'? The ancient moral code of The Odyssey explained https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/zeus-law-moral-code-odyssey-christopher-nolan/ Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:47 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/zeus-law-moral-code-odyssey-christopher-nolan/ Behaving well as a host or visitor wasn’t just a matter of etiquette for the ancient Greeks – it was a sacred duty. Hilary Mitchell explores xenia, the ancient code of hospitality at the heart of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Warning: this article contains spoilers for the new Christopher Nolan movie
Few people will leave a screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey without the phrase “Zeus’s Law” echoing in their minds. In the film, it’s described as a sacred rule that, whenever a stranger arrives, the host must first offer them food, drink and shelter before asking who they are, or even why they have come.
Early on, Antinous, played with teeth-clenching, borderline-psychotic intensity by Robert Pattinson, openly challenges this principle by berating Telemachus for welcoming a ragged beggar into Odysseus’s hall. The irony, of course, is that Antinous himself is a guest in the household, one of the many suitors who have spent years feasting at Odysseus’s expense while shamelessly exploiting their absent host’s generosity.
- Read more | Is The Odyssey based on a true story? The movie's historical accuracy explained
However, “Zeus’s Law” isn’t a phrase found in Homer, or at least not in standard translations. It’s a modern way of expressing a concept for today’s audiences. The actual name for the sacred code that governed the relationship between host and guest was xenia.
Xenia was the expectation that strangers should be welcomed, fed, sheltered and treated with respect – and that guests, in return, would honour their hosts rather than exploit their generosity.
That was because hospitality was under the protection of none other than Zeus himself. As Zeus Xenios (“Zeus, protector of guests and strangers”), the king of the gods watched over the sacred bond between host and visitor, rewarding those who honoured it and punishing those who violated it.
Almost every major episode in Odysseus’s journey home, from the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus to the slaughter of Penelope’s suitors, can be understood through the lens of xenia.
Here’s what we know about this real-life “Zeus’s Law”...
How old is xenia?
No one knows when the custom of xenia began, but it almost certainly predates Homer by many centuries. The Odyssey is thought to have been composed around the late eighth or early seventh century BC, yet it tells stories set during the Mycenaean Bronze Age, several hundred years earlier. In these stories, the rules of hospitality are presented as ancient, familiar and universally understood.
- Read more | I’m an expert on ancient Greece – here’s what you need to know before you watch The Odyssey
Many archaeologists and historians believe that xenia developed in response to the practical realities of life in the ancient Mediterranean. Travellers crossed dangerous mountains and seas without modern conveniences like hotels, or even reliable maps, meaning they often relied on the kindness of strangers.
Welcoming weary travellers into your home helped create networks of trust between families and communities that could last for generations. In many ways, xenia functioned as an early form of international friendship, connecting communities in a world without passports, embassies or formal treaties.
This is reflected in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. “Zeus’s Law” isn’t presented simply as a lesson in good manners, but as one of the foundations of civilisation itself. The film echoes the ancient Greek belief that the bonds between hosts and guests helped hold society together in an unpredictable and often dangerous world. Without xenia, civilisation itself could collapse.
View Green Video on the source website
Examples of xenia in the Odyssey
Once you understand xenia, it becomes clear that this is the moral framework underpinning almost every major episode of the Odyssey. Time and again, Homer asks the same question: how should a host treat a stranger, and how should a guest behave in return?
Perhaps the greatest violation of xenia in the Odyssey comes not from monsters like Polyphemus, but from human beings. For years, the suitors occupy Odysseus’s palace while he is presumed dead, feasting on his food, drinking his wine and using up his resources as they compete for Penelope’s hand in marriage.
- Read more | Greek gods and goddesses: 15 of the most important deities
Rather than respecting their host’s household, they exploit it. Their bloody, John Wick-style slaughter at Odysseus’s hands might seem shocking, but within the moral universe of the poem it is presented as justice. The suitors have repeatedly violated the sacred obligations of xenia and must therefore face the consequences.
Why does xenia still matter today?
More than 2,700 years after the Odyssey was first written down, xenia continues to resonate because it speaks to timeless questions about trust, generosity and our responsibilities towards strangers.
Few modern societies regard hospitality as a sacred obligation enforced by Zeus, but many of the values behind xenia remain deeply familiar: welcoming guests into our homes, treating them well (and making sure you give them the good towels), and showing others respect, compassion and kindness regardless of where they come from or their social status.
That is why Christopher Nolan’s film places such emphasis on “Zeus’s Law”. It isn’t just a memorable line of dialogue, it’s the central theme. It’s also a reminder that, in Homer’s world, the way people treated strangers revealed their character more clearly than almost anything else.
Don’t miss our podcast series exploring the history of Homer’s Odyssey, featuring award-winning classicist and author Daisy Dunn. HistoryExtra members can listen to all four episodes now
]]> Who are those giant soldiers in The Odyssey? The Laestrygonians explained https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/odyssey-giant-soldiers-laestrygonians-christopher-nolan/ Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:07 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/odyssey-giant-soldiers-laestrygonians-christopher-nolan/ Warriors, giants and cannibals with a taste for unwary mariners: Hilary Mitchell reveals the ancient story behind the terrifying metal-clad foes who wreak havoc on Odysseus and his crew in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Warning: this article contains spoilers for the new Christopher Nolan movie
If you left a recent screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with questions about the identity of the towering, metal-clad creatures who descend on Odysseus and his crew shortly after their escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus, you’re not alone.
Nolan deliberately reveals little about these monstrous figures. This means audiences experience the same shock and confusion as the film’s weary Greek sailors, who land on an island hoping for a warm welcome, hospitality and supplies, but are met with cruelty and violence. In the film, the encounter begins with the unsettling sight of a strange, adult-sized child, whose piercing scream summons an army of implacable, merciless warriors. Within moments, the ferocious horde lays waste to Odysseus’s men, forcing the few survivors to flee back to the sea.
- Read more | Is The Odyssey based on a true story? The movie’s historical accuracy explained
The film leaves their identity largely unexplained, but Homer’s original Odyssey tells us much more, and gives them a name: the Laestrygonians. Here’s what we know about them...
Who were the Laestrygonians?
One detail that’s left out of the film is the fact that, as well as being homicidal, these aggressive giants (which appear in Book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey) are also cannibals.
Their king, Antiphates, immediately reveals their true nature when he seizes one of Odysseus’s scouts and abruptly devours him. The rest of the giants soon emerge from the surrounding cliffs, pelting the Greek fleet with huge rocks while spearing sailors “like fish” before carrying them away to eat. Of Odysseus’s 12 ships, only his own escapes. It’s one of the single greatest catastrophes he suffers during the entire epic.
Although monsters such as Polyphemus receive more attention in modern retellings, the Laestrygonians inflict far greater damage. Their attack marks a turning point in the Odyssey: after escaping their island, Odysseus is no longer leading a mighty fleet – just a single, battered vessel carrying the last survivors of a voyage that has become increasingly hopeless.
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How are they different from the Cyclopes?
If Odysseus had a drachma for every time he’d encountered giant cannibals on distant islands, he’d have two drachmas – which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it happened twice.
As a result, it’s easy to confuse the Laestrygonians with the Cyclopes, but in the original poem, Homer presents them very differently. The Cyclopes are a race of one-eyed shepherds who live largely in isolation, with Polyphemus occupying a cave by himself. His encounter with Odysseus becomes a battle of wits, ending with the hero blinding the Cyclops before escaping beneath a flock of sheep.
- Read more | How the Odyssey’s Cyclops became the ancient Greeks’ worst nightmare
The Laestrygonians, by contrast, live together in what appears to be an organised city ruled by King Antiphates. As well as utilising brute strength, they also overwhelm Odysseus through sheer numbers.
What do the Laestrygonians represent?
Like many of the villains and monsters in Greek mythology, the Laestrygonians aren’t just a scary tale to frighten the audience. Throughout the Odyssey, every strange island explores a different moral challenge, like the Lotus-Eaters’ seductive forgetfulness and Circe’s temptations.
The Laestrygonians, meanwhile, embody a world where the sacred laws of hospitality have collapsed altogether. In Greek culture, offering food and protection to travellers (xenia, referred to as “Zeus’s Law” in the film) was considered sacred.
The Laestrygonians invert this tradition completely. Their attack also shows just how vulnerable Odysseus really is. This complicated, wily man can outwit a single Cyclops, but he can’t defeat an entire race of giants.
Were the Laestrygonians based on real people?
No one knows for certain if the Laestrygonians represent a real ancient culture. Ancient readers generally accepted the Laestrygonians as mythical beings, but later writers attempted to identify where they might have lived, placing them at various locations around Sicily and Sardinia.
One of the most intriguing modern theories links them to the Nuragic civilisation of Bronze Age Sardinia. Between around c1600 and c1200 BC, the Nuragic people built thousands of massive stone towers, known as nuraghi, that still dominate the island’s landscape today, which may have helped inspire later stories about a powerful race of giants living on a remote island.
- Read more | Greek gods and goddesses: 15 of the most important deities
Supporters of the theory often reference the Giants of Mont’e Prama, a collection of imposing, monumental limestone sculptures discovered in Sardinia in 1974. Dating to the ninth or eighth century BC, the statues depict towering archers, warriors and boxers, some standing more than two metres (6ft 6in) tall.
However, there is no direct archaeological evidence linking the Nuragic people to the Laestrygonians, and most Homeric scholars consider them to be part of the impressively creative world of the Odyssey rather than a description of a real civilisation.
Don’t miss our podcast series exploring the history of Homer’s Odyssey, featuring award-winning classicist and author Daisy Dunn. HistoryExtra members can listen to all four episodes now
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