One of Josho’s favourite episodes of the science-fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) deals with the problems inherent in reconstructing the past, how the past influences the present, and how it paves the way to the future.

Following the assault of the Capitol Building in Washington DC last week, comparisons with past events have been made that are generally facile and fruitless. Instead, we should seek to explain how violence worked in the past to understand and change the present.

Last month, Josho Brouwers gave a lecture about the cultural signifcance of the Homeric epics to ancient Greek warfare, which was also recorded on video. Here you can read the text of this lecture.

The century following the collapse of the Mycenaean Palaces in Greece is marked by successive destructions, but also revival. The Cycladic Islands of Naxos and Paros offer a compelling case study of these times.

A jug made in Corinth but unearthed in an Etruscan tomb features an image that has been widely interpreted as representing hoplites fighting in phalanx formation. But a closer examination of this artefact casts serious doubts on this view.

Finds from the Minoan settlement at Malia include a number of beautiful swords and daggers, now in the Archaeological Museum of Iraklion.

After the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces in ca. 1200 BC, there is little evidence for destruction on this scale until the late eighth century.

Our idea of the Greek way of war is changing. My book sets out a new interpretation of the iconic hoplite’s battle tactics.

The “Homeric Hymns” are a collection of ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. Let’s read Hymn 8, dedicated to Ares.

Most of the objects recovered in archaeological excavations are broken. Sometimes this breakage is intentional. In Early Iron Age Greece, particularly the tenth and ninth centuries, intentionally destroyed weapons were deposited in burials.