Standing just outside Rome's Porta Maggiore is a unique funeral monument to a successful baking entrepreneur named Eurysaces, who was proud of his occupation and his prosperity. But Eurysaces' weal...
The Spartacus Rebellion is one of the most famous events in all of human history, told and retold time and again. But how and why did it happen, and who participated in it aside from Spartacus hims...
Terence was one of ancient Rome's most popular playwrights and a founder of Latin literature, read by schoolchildren for centuries to come. He had also been enslaved in his youth, and when we look ...
Sex work is work, and it has a long history. In ancient Athens, prostitution was everywhere, but what do we know about the people who chose or were more often forced to engage in it? Neaira is one ...
Slavery is often considered a throwback to an older, less efficient way of organizing an economy, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Sosias, a mining overseer from Thrace, was one of the ...
Nearly 2,700 years ago, a woman and her daughter were ripped away from their homes in what is now Iran by the soldiers of the Assyrian Empire. Nanaya'ila'i was one of thousands upon thousands of pe...
Slavery was there at the beginning of recorded history in Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago, and it's still with us today. But how should we make sense of an institution that has defined the li...
Most of the history we're taught revolves around "Great Men," the Napoleons and Alexander the Greats of the world, but they're hardly typical of the human experience. History actually revolves arou...
From Patrick Wyman (host of Fall of Rome and Tides of History) comes Past Lives, a brand new podcast! Every week, we’ll focus on the lived experiences of real people from the past, bringing their s...
