Archaic: Did you mean...?

Polycrates (r. c. 535-522 BCE) was the tyrant of Samos who established Samian naval supremacy in the eastern Aegean and strove for control of the Aegean Sea and mainland towns of Ionia in the 6th century BCE. Polycrates had a successful career...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes...

Greece, the 'cradle of western civilization', is home to a large number of spectacular sites from the ancient world, several of which have been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. These sites of great historical importance, interest...

The remains of the archaic temple of Apollo, Corinth (550-530 BCE). Originally, there were 6x15 Doric monolithic columns.

Two high archaic kouroi, inscribed as Cleobis and Biton. c.580 BCE. These kouroi are over-life-size, standing at 6.5m tall, and are currently housed at the Delphi Museum. The sculptor was Polymides of Argos.

Aphrodite was the ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty, desire, and all aspects of sexuality. She could entice both gods and men into illicit affairs with her beauty and whispered sweet nothings. Aphrodite was born near Cyprus from the severed...

In the ancient Greek world, warfare was seen as a necessary evil of the human condition. Whether it be small frontier skirmishes between neighbouring city-states, lengthy city-sieges, civil wars, or large-scale battles between multi-alliance...

Ancient Argos, located in the Peloponnese in Greece, was a major Mycenaean settlement in the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100 BCE) and remained important throughout the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman periods until its destruction by the Visigoths...

Linear B script was the writing system of the Mycenaean civilization of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. The syllabic script was used to write Mycenaean Greek from c. 1500 to c. 1200 BCE. It was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, and so...

Helen of Troy (sometimes called Helen of Sparta) is a figure from Greek mythology whose elopement with (or abduction by) the Trojan prince Paris sparked off the Trojan War. Helen was the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and considered...