Ancient Greece

Re-running Marathon

The Battle of Marathon has long been presented as the decisive moment at which Greeks led by the newly democratic Athenians gained the upper hand over the despotic Persians. Barry Baldwin reappraises the battle, and explains why it is still a byword for endurance.

Greece Goes West

A look at a new exhibition in Venice, which shows the flow of culture between East and West in early Greece.

Child's Play in Classical Athens

Lesley Beaumont looks at how children's games were not just seen as pastimes but as active stimuli to learning and good citizenship in the world of Plato and Aristotle.

The City and the Democratic Ideal

François Hartog on how urban living has coincided with the advocacy of popular rule from Plato through to Machiavelli, Rousseau and 20th-century sociologists.

The Classic Woman?

Mary Beard looks at the new ways of thinking about what life was like for women in Greece and Rome.