Ancient icons from Byzantium, Greece, Crete and Russia

Abstract Byzantium is commonly taken to be a somewhat exotic entity on the margin of medieval Europe—bureaucratic, Greek- rather than Latin-speaking, Orthodox rather...

This complete history of Greece documents ancient times to the present, giving specific attention to its emergence as a modern European nation after the destruction, disease, and d...

Knossos is one of the most important sites in the ancient Mediterranean. It remained amongst the largest settlements on the island of Crete from the Neolithic until the late Roman ...

By the end of the 7th century, a new superpower was applying pressure on the East Roman Empire. ‘Byzantium and Islam’ describes the rise of Arab power and the evolution of Islam. T...

What gives beauty such fascinating power? Why is beauty so easy to recognize but so hard to define? Across cultures and continents and over the centuries the standards of beauty ha...

Russia is the world's foremost energy superpower, rivaling Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer and accounting for a quarter of the world's exports of natural gas. Russ...

Abstract Today’s Russia, also known as the Russian Federation, is often viewed as less powerful than the Soviet Union of the past. When stacked against other majo...

This chapter continues the analysis of Chapter 6 by focusing on slavery in classical Crete. Ancient writers from Aristotle onwards compared the system of dependent labour in Crete ...