Tides of History

We don't usually think of the Neo-Babylonian Empire as one of the economic powerhouses of the ancient world, but this short-lived state actually oversaw one of the most stunning periods of economic gr...

What was the ancient economy? Can we even speak of such a singular thing? Today, I introduce the next block of episodes on Tides, an in-depth examination of the cutting edge of knowledge on the ancien...

The ancient world was a lot bigger than Greece and Rome. Dr. Owen Rees joins me to discuss his new book on this broader conception of antiquity - The Far Edges of the Known World - and we traverse the...

Thucydides is perhaps the greatest historian to ever live, a man whose work on the Peloponnesian War has been read, digested, and debated for more than 2400 years. Robin Waterfield and Professor Polly...

The Celts invaded Greece in 280-279 BC, an entirely unforeseen breakthrough of a nearly unknown people into the mainstream of the Hellenistic world. Tens of thousands of Celts poured through the passe...

While Alexander the Great's successors were fighting over control of his empire, Celtic-speaking migrants were moving east along the Danube River, mostly unseen and unnoticed by the Greeks to their so...

The European Iron Age is known almost solely through archaeology, and the material record of the period is still showing us fascinating new aspects of ancient life. Professor Manuel Fernandez-Götz of ...

We're most familiar with the Celts of the west, the people who eventually fought Julius Caesar in Gaul and left their languages along the Atlantic fringe. Yet thanks to mass migrations to the east, th...

When we think of Rome's most dangerous foes, our attention usually turns to Hannibal and his ilk, but it was really the Gauls of northern Italy who troubled Romans the most, and for the longest period...

We have long thought of the Celts (or Gauls) as the antithesis of the ""civilized"" cultures of the Mediterranean, but new research shows that they were building cities and states at the same time as ...