Capturing the immediacy of fighting and the writhing bodies of soldiers, as well as keeping narrative clarity, proved enormously difficult for painters depicting battles before the advent of photography. Michael Hall reveals how they rose to the challenge

The powerful Greek city-state overreached itself and saw its influence decline as it failed to integrate conquered territories

Uncover the all-conquering Hun king whose nomadic horde terrorised Rome

All serious scholarship on ancient Sparta has to be conducted within the penumbra of the ‘mirage Spartiate’, a French term coined in 1933 to describe the problem posed by idealised accounts of Sparta.

Bronze Age Britons travelled long distances to attend communal feasts of grand proportions, sometimes with livestock in tow, shows new studies. A team of archaeologists from Cardiff University conduct

What the West owes to the ancient world