Women: Did you mean...?

It was not only the Mughal emperors that left an indelible mark in the history of the Indian subcontinent but also the queens and princesses. The latter's contributions to art, architecture, literature, cuisine, refinement, and administrative...

The Ecclesiazusae (aka Assemblywomen) is a comedy play written by Aristophanes, one of the great Greek comic playwrights. Written sometime between 393 and 391 BCE, it is, along with his play Wealth, one of only two he wrote after the Athenian...

The 8th November is celebrated as Archangels Day in Greece, but on that November day in 1977 CE something remarkable happened: an excavation team led by Professor Manolis Andronikos were roped down into the eerie gloom of an unlooted Macedonian-styled...

Female gladiators in ancient Rome – referred to by modern-day scholars as gladiatrix – may have been uncommon but they did exist. Evidence suggests that a number of women participated in the public games of Rome even though this practice...

Family planning was a topic of vital importance in the ancient Mediterranean. Some of the earliest medical literature from ancient Greece and Rome deals with fertility and reproductive health. Among the numerous treatments and procedures...

Christianity began as a sect of Judaism in Judea in the 1st century CE and spread to the cities of the Eastern Roman Empire and beyond. In these cities, non-Jews, Gentiles, wanted to join the movement, and these Gentile-Christians soon outnumbered...

Gorgo was the queen of the Greek city-state of Sparta, daughter of the king Cleomenes (r. 520-490 BCE), wife of King Leonidas (r. 490-480 BCE), and mother of King Pleistarchus (r. 480-458 BCE). Her birth and death dates are unclear as women...

Prostitution in ancient Athens was legal and regulated by the state. During the Greek Archaic Period (c. 800-479 BCE) brothels were instituted and taxed by the lawgiver Solon (l. c. 630 - c. 560 BCE), and this policy continued into the Classical...

In many cultures of antiquity women had to battle the disadvantages of rules and conventions made for men and by men who dominated government, public life, and society. Nevertheless, many ancient religions had powerful female goddesses like...

A famous story from Greece relates how a young woman named Agnodice wished to become a doctor in Athens but found this forbidden. In fact, a woman practicing medicine in Athens in the 4th century BCE faced the death penalty. Refusing to give...