Susanna Phillippo, Newcastle University and Sally Waite, Newcastle University Homer’s Odyssey, with its fabulous monsters and intense tale of human endurance, was a natural candidate for Christopher Nolan’s latest Hollywood blockbuster. But amid all the fantasy and heroic human drama, there are two far more homely scenes in the poem which remain among the epic’s…

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Wikimedia Claire Ferguson, University of Tasmania Learning about lesbians from ancient Roman texts is hard. For one thing, most sources we have were written by men, and were largely about men (and how they perceived women). But Roman lesbians did exist. So uncovering what they were like – and what place they may have held…

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William Dent depicts Cerberus, the Hound of Hades – a three-headed dog symbolising gluttony – as composed of the heads of politicians Charles Fox, Lord North and Edmund Burke. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, Accession Number B1981.25.1573 Callum Smith, Aberystwyth University Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has brought Homer’s epic tale back to…

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Dice players in a mosaic panel from Thysdrus, Tunisia, Roman 2nd century CE. DeAgostini/Getty Images Konstantine Panegyres, The University of Western Australia Australia is once again debating how gambling should be regulated, particularly the reach of online betting and gambling advertising. The arguments may sound modern, but the problem is not. Ancient Greeks and Romans…

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