Cicero is assassinated

The most celebrated of all ancient Romans almost met a watery end before he’d made his big splash in the vast ocean of history. In 75 BC, Julius Caesar – then in his mid-20s and yet to establish himse

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.

What the West owes to the ancient world

In the 21st century, we have moved into an era of performative covert action. Leaders such as Vladimir Putin have used the shadow of death to coerce their enemies overseas and to reinforce their warri

When General Francisco Franco died on 20 November 1975 – 39 years after the start of the brutal civil war that brought him to power – the prospect of a bloodless transition to democracy in Spain appea