In this episode of the Ancient World Magazine podcast, Dr Josho Brouwers is joined by contributing editor Dr Joshua Hall, regular contributor Dr Arianna Sacco, and special guest Dr Silvannen Gerrard to talk about chariots, from the Bronze Age down to the Roman era.

Shortly before the Persian Wars, the ancient Greeks developed a new ritual, known as the sphagia, in which a male sacrificial animal would be killed shortly before the start of a battle.

Many people believe that the ancient Greeks used, among other things, armour that was made of layers of linen cloth glued together. But there is no ancient text linking linen armour and glue. No other culture made armour this way. So where does this idea come from?

Military disasters were fairly rare in the Roman world – at least, according to the historical record. But when they happened, they happened with a vengeance – and could permanently destroy the reputation of those involved, even if their actions were not actually to blame.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins is a game developed and published by Ubisoft that is set in Ptolemaic Egypt around the time of Cleopatra’s accession to the throne, with the player controlling Bayek of Siwa.

A funerary krater from the Geometric Dipylon cemetery in Athens includes a battle scene with some interesting and unusual features, suggesting a story of weapons and women captured through a raid.

There are a lot of bad takes with respect to what warfare was like in the Late Bronze Age Aegean. In this article, Josho Brouwers offers a comprehensive overview of Mycenaean warfare.

Aaron Beek reviews Michael Taylor’s Soldiers and Silver (2020), a revision of his 2015 PhD dissertation, Finance, Manpower, and the Rise of Rome. Despite some quibbles, Taylor has succeeded at clarifying an often-unclear topic with some fine scholarship.

Compared to Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey appears to be set in a world at peace. But despite the epic taking place far from the Trojan battlefield, violence still plays an important role.

In the Iliad, Paris challenges the Greeks to a duel to settle the Trojan War once and for all. Menelaus accepts, but before he can kill Paris, the Trojan prince is rescued by the goddess Aphrodite. Still, why wasn’t Menelaus proclaimed the winner?