Greece

In 480 BC, 300 Spartans made a famous stand at Thermopylae, as hordes of Persian soldiers, led by Xerxes, seemed set to succeed in their aim of conquering Greece. However, although Leonidas and his me…

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook continue their celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian invasion of Greece. Today, they look at two battles which have echoed down the millennia: Thermop…

The world’s most famous classicist, Professor Mary Beard, joins Tom and Dominic to discuss how the legacy of classical Greece and Rome has been interpreted and re-interpreted over the past millennium…

Born on the Western edge of an empire that stretched all the way to India, Herodotus was a Greek historian of the 5th century BC. His major work The Histories, a long and detailed account of the Greco…

By 1809, Lord Byron found himself untethered and debt-ridden. Disenchanted with politics, frustrated by his literary career and haunted by his illicit homosexuality, he abandoned an oppressive England…

Rumours surrounding Lord Byron’s scandalous divorce rippled throughout the world. Finally, he had no choice but to abandon England in disgrace and flee to Italy, an exile but still the most famous man…

What are the mythic origins of Zeus, King of the Olympians, and the other Greek gods? From what period did the earliest of the Greek myths derive? Who was Hesiod - alongside Homer, the greatest of the…

What terrifying trials did Jason and the Argonauts have to overcome to win the famous Golden Fleece from a fire-breathing dragon, in one of the greatest greek myths of all time? When and where does th…

Did the Trojan War - the ten year, cosmic clash between the Greeks and the Trojans, featuring the Olympian gods, kings and heroes - actually happen? Is there any evidence for the existence of the Troj…

No one was like him, terrible were his crimes… Where was Alexander the Great born, and who were his parents? What drove him to go beyond the Aegean empire he had already carved out for himself, and…